TSP: The ARCANE Deception
by cenkantra
Summary: A clash of kingdoms has left the TSP crew caught in the middle - and war is escalating. And when they lose one of their own, things only get harder. But all's not as it seems.
1. Chapter 1

The clear night sky of the Digital World had been choked out with smoke. Hundreds of small villages were burning, as the Northern Army pushed south in their biggest offensive campaign in over six thousand years. Millions of Digimon were involved, and despite the fact that the Southern Alliance vastly outnumbered the Northern, they were getting beaten back at an incredible pace.

Especially along the "Mered" line - an axis of larger villages that sat at the crossroads of some of the largest trade highways in the Empire. The Northern Army was advancing very quickly here - and once they broke through the defensive barriers, more than half of the Southern Kingdom would be exposed to their forces, defenseless.

Close to one of these villages - on the opposite side of a sheer cliff drop - was a small mountain. Covering the top of the mountain was a thick forest, and perched on the edge of the forest was a large, blue, Dragon Digimon.

The ExVeemon looked out over the burning village, vaguely wondering why they had targeted _this_ village. It lay on the far outskirts of the Mered Line, and there was no real reason for it's destruction.

But the army's assault was not his concern. He got to his feet and stretched his wings. He had been sent here to track down and kill one of the last remaining Shifters. This would be the last opportunity, in a very long time, to disguise a killing as a casualty of war.

With a massive beat of his wings, he took to the sky, and headed towards the village. Acrid smoke quickly filled his nostrils, and he was forced to take shallower breaths.

He looked down as he flew over the village. On his first pass, he was lucky. He saw a thin, white form running in between the burning houses, as if looking for something. Whatever it was, it must have been very important - this village was due to be overrun in about three minutes.

The assassin dropped altitude, heading straight for the white figure, who had exited into the main highway, where it was still relatively clear. Then his target stopped, and stooped to the ground.

"_Excellent!_" the ExVeemon thought, his muscles tensing in anticipation of the kill. It would be quick and painful, and then it would be over. He held his claws ready to plow into the Digimon, folded back his wings...

...and hit the ground with a tremendous crash as the target sidestepped. He slid along for a few feet before he came to a stop, and he heard a metallic device fall to the ground a short distance away.

"Here it is!" his target called, stooping and picking up the device. The assassin looked over as his intended target calmly pocketed the device, then gave him a glaring look.

"You should be more careful, you know - eighty-gig iPods are _rare_ these days!"

The assassin growled and jumped to his feet, claws and wings ready. He assumed the attack position, directly facing his opponent, narrowing his eyes to get a better look.

Directly facing him was a Flamedramon, but far removed from any Flamedramon that had existed before. This one was pure white, with black lines tattooed at seemingly random points on the body. They all looked tribal, and they all had a slightly dyspeptic shade of grey. Jorcy was truly one of a kind.

Jorcy looked at the assassin – and snickered. "Man, you _are_ tense."

The ExVeemon blinked, and before he could come up with a witty retort, a white Flamedramon claw plowed into his chest, sending him sprawling back over the ground.

"First rule," Jorcy called. The ExVeemon looked up from his fallen position.

"Never blink," he said. The ExVeemon snarled, got to his feet, and charged forward.

To his surprise, Jorcy just stood there. He brought up his claw, and with all his might, swiped at where Jorcy's head _should_be.

He looked up, just in time to see a white blur come down from the skies. He barely managed to dodge the attack, and when he looked back - just a split second later - the impact crater was all he could see.

Then the impact crater moved closer with alarming speed, as he was shoved into the ground. He couldn't regain his balance, and he smacked into it. Hard.

He heard a small 'poof' in front of him, and managed to look up. Jorcy was standing there, busy fiddling with his iPod. He did something to it, then closed his eyes as he listened. With a smile, he pocketed the iPod - that's when he saw the white wires running from his utility harness to where his ears would be.

"_Music?_" he asked, now baffled beyond all sane measure.

Jorcy grinned. "_Daft Punk_'s finest."

The grin infuriated the assassin, who jumped off the ground, readying himself again. He wouldn't let this arrogant _mutant_ get the better of him.

The assassin ran straight for him. No more pose or strategy - he just wanted to kick this mongrel's ass. What he wasn't expecting, was what happened next.

Jorcy started singing. And more than that, he was singing to a beat. It threw the assassin off just long enough to realize that he was looking at where Jorcy _had_been.

"Harder," came a voice, as a massive kick from behind flung him into the sky.  
"Better," he heard from his left, as a full body blow sent him back towards the ground.  
"Faster," came a voice from his right, as he was kicked towards the cliff overhang.  
"Stronger!" he heard from above, and a massive weight suddenly fell upon him.

The assassin plowed into the ground, the momentum from the last kick carrying him almost a hundred feet, as he carved a massive furrow into the ground. Standing on top of him, riding him with remarkable disdain, was Jorcy, calmly inspecting his claws.

When they came to a stop, Jorcy hopped off and turned around. The assassin just stayed down. Jorcy grinned again, as he stepped towards the edge of the cliff.

He heard a dragging noise behind him, as the exhausted and battered assassin pulled himself off the ground. Jorcy spun, ready for the next attack.

Instead, he was greeted by an ExVeemon that looked like he had been hit by a freight goods train traveling to San Francisco at one hundred miles per hour, that was met by a train traveling in the opposite direction at one hundred and twenty miles per hour.

On the same track.

"Why won't you just _die?!_" the assassin asked.

Jorcy cocked his head, in the most annoying way any Digimon had ever done it.

"Die?"

"Yes, die."

"As in, d-i-e?"

"Yes!"

"As in, stop living?"

"YES DAMMIT!"

The assassin charged for Jorcy, throwing his weight at empty space as Jorcy neatly sidestepped. The assassin went over the edge silently, too irritated at the offending Digimon to care about the fact that he couldn't fly anymore, and it was a six-thousand foot drop to the valley floor.

Jorcy rewound the currently playing song - "Big Fun" - and took off into the night at a leisurely run.

* * *

This story started out as a parodical response to Jared Head's The Silent Project, but it soon evolved into something much more. It's basically it's own story...

Enjoy the rest!


	2. Chapter 2

Far removed from the scarred sky of the battlefront, a shining sun heralded a new dawn, as light spilled over the secret plateau that held Chelone. The skies were clear, the air was cool and crisp, and two dragons were engaged in a gruelling duel of speed and wit.

Edan crashed into the ground, and quickly looked over his shoulder. Kaida wasn't far behind, falling straight for him, claw outstretched. He leaped again, rocketing at least a hundred feet into the air, and five hundred feet over the cracked rock surface.

The air-time gave him room to think. He was still in the lead, but his next three moves would be critical - Kaida was very good at this game. As he landed, he went into a roll, then exited with another leap as he finished his revolution. He was carried low and fast by his momentum.

_Okay, Edan. Here we go..._

He extended his legs, and hit the ground running. To his left was the start of a mountain range, and to his right, was a sheer cliff drop. He was running between them at maximum speed, intending to take a left turn and follow the ridge line.

What he wasn't expecting was Kaida suddenly appearing _in front_ of him. He couldn't break his run, so instead, he leaped to the side, entering the mountain range. His agility and power made short work of the numerous hills and valleys, and it wasn't too long before he executed a final jump, heading straight for the mountain summit.

Then, out of nowhere, a red figure flashed below him. A split second later, Kaida plowed into him - full force, and in mid air.

"Tag!" she yelled, then kicked away from him, sending him spiralling back to the valley floor below at a (literally) breakneck speed. He had almost three seconds to react, so it wasn't a problem.

He spun around in mid air, pointing his clawed feet at the ground. And in the one-and-a-half seconds before impact, a whitish glow enveloped his body.

The impact made the mountain shake, as cracks ran up the side. The entire valley - almost a mile wide - sunk by a few inches, as the decidedly brittle rock tried to cope with the impact. Where Edan should have been, there was nothing but a white hemisphere, embedded in the ground.

At about the same time, Kaida had landed neatly on the mountain that Edan had been aiming for. She felt the shock of the impact, and looked down the side of the cliff face, wondering if maybe she hadn't overreacted with the kick.

The sphere faded away, and she was looking at nothing but scarred ground. In her amazement, she failed to react to the brief tearing sound behind her - or the sudden impact that sent her over the ridge.

_"_Tag!_" _came a voice from behind her._ Edan_, she realised, as mechanical Guilmon claws wrapped around her chest. He was taking her straight into the ground. From this height - and at this speed - the impact would do little more than stun her for a second. A price she was willing to pay, if her next trick didn't work.

She elbowed Edan in the side - _hard_ - and he involuntarily relaxed his grip. In that split second, she wrestled his arms away, spun around, literally _climbed_ around Edan in mid air, and got him in a death-grip that he wouldn't be able to break out of in the two seconds it would take to hit the ground.

He did try, though, and managed to flip onto his back before the impact. He would hit the ground back-first, but it wouldn't hurt.

At least, that was Kaida's assumption. Because when they hit the ground - Edan cushioning her fall - he let out a scream of pain that she had never heard from any sentient being alive - human or Digimon.

Their faces were about an inch from eachother. Edan's left eye shed a tear, as he tried to hold his screaming back. In an instant, Kaida wondered what she had done wrong...

"Kaida," he said, though his clenched teeth. "I know you're female ... and I know that you have no... concept of what it feels like ... but ... for the love of _God..._"

She looked down - right at her knee, neatly embedded in his groin. She withdrew it immediately, and Edan took a deep breath - relief from the searing pain.

"So..." was about as far as she got, before Edan kneed her in the chest, then finished it with a scissor kick, sending her flying into the cliff face behind him. He heard the undefended smack of impact, and pulled himself off the ground, wincing.

Kaida pulled herself from the cliff face, enraged. She was trying to _apologise_! In a fury, she spun around, and bore down on him at full speed. Before he could react, she sent him flying across the valley with the most powerful kick she could muster.

The lack of control sent her spiralling, and she had to regain her balance before she could look back at him. She was expecting to see him slamming into the wall, but...

... there was nothing.

No impact. No dust. No Edan.

She immediately went into defense mode, tensing every muscle, and tuning every sense in. But there was nothing, apart from a mild valley breeze.

"E...Edan?" she called into the silence, hearing her own echoes, but nothing else.

"Edan!" she called again, louder. The echoes responded in kind, but not Edan.

"EDAN!!" she yelled, starting to get scared. No response.

"Edan, dammit, this isn't funny. Where are you?!"

She was greeted by a gust of wind, but nothing else.

"Oh no..." she whispered to herself.

--------------------------------------------------

Flame was sitting, relaxed, at his terminal. Random bits of data about the Digital World flowed across the multiple screens in front of him, but most of his attention was focused on the music in his ears - and his eyes were closed. Hew had recently taken a strange kind of interest in rock music, and he was busy listening to some "highly recommended" samples.

A beeping distracted him from his enjoyment, and he opened one eye. Then he saw what had caused the warning, and he tore the earphones out.

"_Unauthorized Exit," _said the massive red warning box. Something had left the Chelone area without warning.

"RED! Locate!"

The artificial intelligence drives kicked into action, and started cross-computing all the data it had. A few tense seconds later, it provided an answer.

"Location within three feet confirmed. Northern valley."

_Northern Valley, _Flame thought. There was nothing on the other side - just a drop off the entire Chelone plane.

"Exit profile?"

"_Unable to determine._"

RED was not able to tell which Digimon had exited. Flame had been expecting a negative answer anyway, but it was worth a try.

"RED, find closest Shifter."

"_Located Kaida."_

"Open a link."

----------------------

Kaida was still staring at the cliff face when something in her left ear rang. She waved a claw over it.

"Y...Yes?" she managed to stammer.

"Kaida, it's Flame. Have any Digimon near you dropped out of the Chelone plane recently?"

"Oh God," she said, realising. "..._Edan_."

There was silence on the line.

"Kaida," Flame said, his voice suddenly tense. "What happened?"

"I... I don't know. We were playing, and..." she couldn't finish her sentence.

"Kaida, return to base immediately."

"On my way."

-----------------------

"RED, can you pinpoint the destination of the exit?"

"_Impossible._"

"Shit," Flame muttered, staring at the protected black button on his control panel. There was no option - one of their own had gone missing.

He lifted the clear plastic panel, and pressed the switch.

"_Situation Black declared. Alerting all personnel."_

------------------------


	3. Chapter 3

Jet arrived in the control room soon after, bringing Kaida with him. All of them looked at the screens.

"Hey," Jet suddenly said. "Where's Jorcy?"

"Still out at the battlefront," Flame said. "He won't get back for a while."

"Crap... Okay," Jet said, staring at the screens. "I guess we'll have to do without him."

"Kaida - I need you to tell me what happened out there." Flame said.

"Well," she began, suddenly embarrassed and ashamed.

"Kaida," he said, softly. "We can deal with that later. Edan's a priority right now."

She lowered her head, unable to look Flame in the eye. "I kicked him, sent him into a cliff face. But he didn't hit. He just ..."

"Vanished?" Flame finished. Kaida nodded.

He looked up at Jet, who just nodded and left the room. That cliff face deserved a second look.

---------------------

Kaida tried to hold back her tears. "I... I didn't mean to," she tried to say, but all she could manage was a mumble. Flame tenderly lay a claw on her shoulder.

"Hey," he said. "Look at me."

Kaida looked up. Flame could see a raging mix of emotions within her - none of them would do the situation any good.

"Kaida, there was no way you could have known this would happen."

She said nothing, just looked down again.

"Kaida, you're not responsible for this," Flame almost whispered. She could hear him, but she didn't respond. Flame was beginning to realise this was more than a mistake for her...

"Kaida," he began again, and suddenly she responded.

"Dammit ... WHY?!" she screamed into the control room. Flame said nothing.

"WHY ME?!" Her arms were waving in rage.

"First time in my _life_ that I try and have some fun, and I _fuck_ it up!"

"Kaida," Flame tried to say, but she wasn't listening.

"TYPICAL ME!! She shouted at the screens, slamming her claws into the panel, breaking several controls. RED had already deactivated them in preparation for her rage.

"Edan, I'm sorry..." she trailed off, and was silent. Flame waited a while before getting up, and standing next to her.

"Kaida," he said softly. "What happened to Edan was not your fault. And he won't hold you responsible for it. Do you understand?"

She didn't move. Her head was down, and eyes were closed, trying to hold back the tears. In the relative dark of the control room, the glow from the screens illuminated nothing more than the back of her head, hiding her face from view.

"Kaida, we can bring him back. Do you understand?"

She nodded slowly, saying nothing. Flame draped an arm around her shoulders.

"But we'll need your help to do it," he said. "And you can't help if you're still feeling guilty about it."

Kaida tried to inhale, but her breath caught in several places.

"Kaida," Flame said. "You need to forgive yourself."

She tensed. But almost immediately afterwards, she forced herself to relax. She knew that what Flame was saying was true.

"Can you do that? Can you forgive yourself of this?"

She thought about it for a long time before nodding slowly.

"Then look at me," he said. She looked up at him, eyes raw. Flame placed one claw on each shoulder, and looked her directly in the eyes.

"Kaida, it's not your fault."

She almost fought the statement, but managed to bring herself back. Flame could feel her tension, but it would have to be broken through.

"Kaida," he began, and her conscience filled in the rest.

As the enormity of the statement finally took root in her, she was unable to stop the flood of tears reaching the surface.

Flame held her while she cried.

------------------------

Jet landed with a much softer impact, folding his wings as he started looking around the valley. There were cracks, scars, and craters everywhere, all fresh. He grinned to himself. _Those two really play rough,_ he thought.

"Now," he said to the valley. "If I was a freaky portal that took me off the plane, where would I hide?" he asked.

His voice barely echoed back to him.

"In the cliff face I was kicked into, of course," he said, answering his own question.

"But which one?" he asked again, scratching his chin in thought.

"And why the hell do you all look the _same_?" he demanded of the rocks before him.

Searching every one would take too long. But he realised that he woudn't have to do that. He had spotted an impact crater in one of the walls, and one in the ground dead in front of it.

He could picture the scenario. Both of them had hit the ground, and Edan had probably sent Kaida into the wall behind them. Kaida would have retaliated immediately.

His search narrowed to the section of cliff face directly opposite Kaida's impact crater. And it wasn't too long before he found what he was looking for.

Etched into a smooth, vertical section of rock was a ring of alien-looking runes. The ring they formed was almost three feet in diameter. If they indicated a portal, it would be more than enough to swallow Edan whole.

As a test, he looked around for a boulder. Finding one the size of his own head, he tossed it into the air, catching it neatly. While moving away from the cliff face - in case there was any reaction - he kept tossing it into the air, like a tennis player.

"Alright then," he said at the circle of runes, as he stood on almost the other side of the valley - a distance of nearly 50 feet. "Let's see what you're made of."

He drew up his leg and cocked back his arm like a baseball pitcher, and hurled the rock straight at the center of the circle.

"He pitches!" he shouted, then a moment later, "and he ... what the...?"

The rock had vanished. A second ago, it was travelling for the portal, of that he was sure. There had been no 'thud' of impact.

"Heh," he said, reaching for his communicator.

"Flame? I've found it."


	4. Chapter 4

Edan slowly drifted back into consciousness. He didn't know what had hit him... All he remembered was Kaida kicking him, and then ... nothing.

Everything was dark. _Well, duh_, he thought, as he opened his eyes.

Except that they were already open.

He frowned, then lifted his claw to his face. All he could make out was a dim, red blur.

"Great," he said, then stopped - surprised to hear his voice echo down two directions. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could make out his immediate surroundings. He was in a dark tunnel of some sort. He looked up, thinking he had detected light.

Something had moved, and as he stared, a massive rock smacked him in the face, knocking him out again.

--------------------

"But why can't I just go through it?" Jet asked

Flame spun around in his chair as Jet's voice came through. Kaida was sitting in the chair next to him, also staring at the screens. When the crying had worn out, Flame had seen a new kind of strength in her, hidden under all those layers of insecurity. He smiled to himself, then turned his attention back to Jet.

"It's too dangerous," Flame said. "It won't do you any good if you enter it, and we lose all contact. That won't help Edan one bit."

"Okay," Jet said. "So now what?"

"Can you get me a visual?" he asked.

"Sure. Just a sec."

Three seconds later, a high-resolution image of the runes appeared on the primary display. Both Flame and Kaida looked at it.

"Interesting," Flame said. "RED, extrapolate the markings."

"_Working,_"

The brown rock disappeared, as the runes floated free, outlined in white. RED continued to clear up the image, until they were left with only the runes. Then the runes sharpened, the fuzzy outlines vanished, and they were left with a crystal clear image.

"What are they?" Kaida asked.

"Ancient writing, of some sort," Flame said. "Probably from some previous Digimon culture. RED, please run those runes against the database."

The circle fragmented, and each individual rune was seperated, one at a time. RED ran through the mega-terabit drives in seconds, locating all known matches for each rune. When the search for the rune was done, it was placed back in the circle, and the next rune was popped out.

About a minute later, RED returned the results.

"_Search complete. Partial matches found._"

About half of the runes lit up in green, as their meanings appeared on screens all around the main display. It was a wealth of information, and Flame quickly studied over it.

Kaida looked at them, too. She could also read the descriptions if she wanted to, but somehow, those runes looked very familiar...

"Okay, it's starting to make sense," Flame said. The communication channel to Jet was open, and he could hear everything.

"The circle is divided into three sections, based on the runes in each section. One third of the circle contains symbols relating to direction, or co-ordinates. Another section contains descriptive runes - describing the destination, I think - and the last section involves an incantation of some sort. Probably the field that drives the portal."

"So basically," Jet said, "It's a door with a name, that leads somewhere, and has the energy to get you there."

"Yeah," Flame said. "Though where that is is anyone's guess. RED, any additional information?"

The AI came to life.

"_The directional runes seem to indicate a subsurface destination, while the descriptive runes mostly involve a tubular enclosure of some sort. My best estimation is that it's pointing to a subterranean tunnel."_

"Good," Flame said. "Does the portal have a range?"

"_It would appear so. Given Edan's mass signature, I have computed a maximum possible range of six thousand miles. However, the unknown runes might add more distance to that number."_

"Okay," Flame said, feeling close to an answer. "Given that distance, where would the tunnel be?"

"_I compute over sixty thousand possible locations within the Digital World alone._"

His face fell. "Sixty _thousand?_"

"_Yes,_" the AI said.

"Uh, hate to break it to you," Jet said, "but RED said 'alone'."

"_Yes,_" RED said again. "_If I take the Real World into account, the number of possible locations jumps to over fourty-five million, not counting subsea tunnels. Adding those could well push the amount past one hundred million._"

"Thank you, RED," Flame said. All he needed to hear now were some more drastically large numbers, each one reducing the chances of them finding Edan.

"Wait," Kaida said, holding up a claw. "We're missing something."

Flame looked at her. "What are you thinking?"

She just stared at the runes. Then she started speaking.

"RED, please number the runes."

The numbers 1 to 24 jumped out of nowhere, each sitting next to a rune. Numbers 1 to 8 were the description, 9 to 16 were the location, and 17 to 24 were the engine.

"Okay," she said, kicking her brain into high gear. "Let's figure this out."

-----------------

"RED, isolate runes 1 through 8."

The screen cleared, leaving only 8 runes behind. Four of them were green - the solved ones.

"Stack the runes vertically, with the first rune at the top."

They shuffled around, and settled in a vertical line. Kaida looked at them some more, and Flame sat back, letting her take over.

Runes 2, 4, 6 and 7 were solved. The rest needed some work.

"RED, what are the potential matches for rune one?"

"_Searching..."_

"_Sixty partial matches found._"

"Okay. List one-word summaries for each of the matches on that screen," she said, pointing to a blank monitor. It filled with text, and she quickly scanned over it. Most of the words were obviously wrong - adjectives such as "bright" and "warm (light)".

"RED, order those words, from most relevant, to least relevant, in relation to the solved runes."

"_Running conceptual sort._"

The words jumped around - and words like "dark", "damp", and "echo" appeared at the top.

"Okay. Assign the first five words as potential matches for the first rune."

"_Working._"

Rune one turned yellow, as it was assigned several different meanings.

"Okay, RED. Now repeat that process for the rest of the unsolved runes in this set."

"_Working..._"

RED was silent as it searched through the remaining three runes. Hundreds of words flashed by on all the monitors, and it took almost a minute to solve each one. Eventually, Kaida was left with four yellow runes, as well as the solved green ones.

"RED. Display the perfect match summaries next to the appropriate runes."

Four words appeared, each next to a green rune.

"Now, given those words, and their context, display the most relevant word from each unsolved rune's potential solution array."

Four more words appeared. She looked at them, and frowned.

"Update runes 1, 5 and 8 with the next best matches."

The words changed. There was silence for a moment, and then,

"MyGod," Flame said. "_Kaida_?"

She smiled. "Jet. We're looking for a dark, dry tunnel about four feet in diameter, carved out of a mountain range. The tunnel has a complex branching structure, and is centered around a massive chamber of some sort. The primary composition of the tunnel walls is an igneous rock/kimberlite compound, so it probably belongs to a currently inactive volcano."

More silence. And then...

"Holy _shit_," Jet exclaimed. "You can tell all that?"

"Not me," she said. "The runes."

"RED," Flame said. "What does that do to the possibilites?"

"_Calculating ..._"

"Kaida," he said, looking over at her. "You are a genius."

She grinned.

"_Down to twenty thousand possibilities within the Digital World."_

"But we're not done yet," Kaida said. "Bring up runes 17 through 24."

----------------------

Kaida watched as the massive AI worked at figuring out the runes. The instructions were mostly the same as last time, so all she really had to do was rell RED to repeat the process. Eventually, the answers flashed up.

"Update rune three with the next likely answer," she said. The word changed.

"Again?"

And again. Until she had run through all the runes. What she was looking at now was a sequence that was logically correct, but that she wasn't able to interpret.

"Flame?"

"Yes," he said. "RED, what is Edan's nett mass?"

"_Approximately thirteen point seven kilograms._"

"Heavy kid," Kaida remarked.

"Okay," Flame said. "Given Edan's mass, the phase of the portal, the latent energy in the rock substrate, the phase of the Digital World's rotation, the size of the runes, and the approximate total kinetic energy that he had when entering the portal, I compute that Edan could not have gone further than two thousand kilometers."

"RED, narrow down the locations," Kaida said.

"_Working..."_

"_There are three possible locations remaining._"

"And in the Real World?" Flame asked, getting excited.

"_None. The capacity of the portal does not allow for a Real World entrance._"

Flame almost leaped out of his chair with joy. "Excellent!" he said. "Bring up those points on a map, please."

---------------------

"Jet, I want you to travel to the following location," Flame said, pointing at a red dot on the map. RED relayed the information to Jet.

"I'm going here," he said, pointing at another dot.

"Kaida, I want you to start searching _here_," he said, pointing at the third. She looked at the map, and nodded.

"Got the dot," Jet said. "On my way."

"Let's go," Flame said to Kaida, then locked the terminal as he stood up.

Kaida stood too. They had work to do.

-------------------


	5. Chapter 5

Edan came around again, this time, his face was hurting. Before another rock could come crashing down on him, he scrambled away, and hit the opposite wall in his confusion.

"Arggh," he said, holding his head and trying to stand. The tunnel was high enough - his ears were dragging on the ceiling. Except for the throbbing in his brain, everything was normal.

A few seconds later, his mechanically-augmented healing started taking it's effect, and the pain started clearing up.

"Okay," he said to himself. "Where am I?"

The dead tunnel provided no answers. Well, it was a tunnel. Tunnels led to other places, didn't they?

Edan reached behind his head, and ran his claw over a very specific piece of skin. His right eye had been reconstructed, and was augmented with light receptors. He blinked as the tunnel suddenly brightened for him.

"Hmm," he said, looking closer at the walls. There was something in them that sparkled, even in the dim light. He guessed it was a crystal compound, probably formed under high temperature and stress.

Then he took another look at the tunnel. Black.

"Black, glitter..." he said to himself, starting to walk forward. The ceiling felt very rough against his ears. It was a very distinctive feel... Suddenly it clicked.

"Volcano," he said to himself. His immediate reaction was a mild panic, but when he realised that there was actually no red hot lava in the tunnel, he relaxed.

"Inactive," he reminded himself, then started walking forward again. This tunnel had to lead _somewhere_...

---------------------------

About twenty minutes of walking had revealed nothing, except more and more tunnels, branching off in every imaginable direction - even up and down. He had dodged the falls, looked at the ceiling gaps, and tried finding a way out, but it was of no use. His Chelone communicator obviously didn't work down here, but he left it to scan just in case.

But was "down" even an appropriate description? Volcanoes tended to stick up out of the ground. So he was probably way above ground level right now. All the weight above him, though, seemed to be pressing down on him. For all he cared, he could have been a million miles under the ground.

He kept walking, at a slightly faster pace. There was a way out of here, and he was going to find it.

------------------------

Ten minutes later. Still nothing. He was beginning to wonder if maybe he wasn't walking in circles. Every step against the black, charred igneous rock was starting to hurt, his ears were getting rubbed raw, and he couldn't stretch his arms in the confined space.

Then he stopped. There was something lying on the ground, a different color from the rest of the tunnel. It was about the size of his own head, and it took two hands to lift.

A boulder.

But ... wasn't this the boulder that had knocked him out?

It was. He recognised a metallic scratch on the rock, caused by his reinforced skull.

A wave of despair settled over Edan, as he looked back, realising that in the last half hour, he had gotten nowhere.

---------------------------

"Help!" he yelled into the tunnel as he ran. Maybe, hope against hope, there was someone else down here; someone who could help.

"HELP!"

He was getting panicked. Where was he? How far down, how close to the core? Why couldn't he hear anything except his own breathing and footsteps?

Suddenly, it was as if he was right back where he had began. He was beginning to see little boulders everywhere - reminders of his trapped situation. He closed his eyes and ran harder, straight into a wall that he swore hadn't been there.

The impact knocked him dizzy, and he spun around without knowing it - running back in the direction he had come.

Less than ten seconds later, he was properly lost in the labyrinth, and slowly becoming terrified. He was keeping his eyes trained on the path ahead, and tripped over something.

The boulder.

He freaked.

--------------------------

"I'm in position," Jet said. He was hovering over a massive volcano - one of the points that RED had pinpointed.

"Okay," Flame's voice crackled over the communicator. "You know what to do."

"Sure," Jet said, as he dropped altitude, and headed straight for the volcano's cone.

--------------------------

Edan smacked into another wall, and this time he fell.

When he realised he was down, he panicked even more, clawing against the walls.

"Let me out of here!" he yelled, scratching fruitlessly at the walls. He started hammering, tears falling...

"LET ME OUT OF HERE!" 

He headbutted the wall, recoiling at the unexpected hardness, but then he kept going. _Bang ... Bang ... Bang ..._

Eventually, bruised and bleeding, he stopped. His anxiety had been replaced by a numb feeling in his soul, and he was somewhat able to think.

"Okay," he gasped through stretched lungs. "Edan, you need to calm down."

He took another deep breath, letting the oxygen fill his lungs.

"There we go, buddy," he said to himself. "Just _relax..._"

He exhaled again, and drew in another fresh breath. When he exhaled it, he was almost back to normal.

----------------------

"Engaging echolocation."

A piercing scream tore through the volcano, vibrating all the rock, and causing more than one crack in the cone wall. Jet grimaced at the noise, and after fifteen seconds, turned the emitter off.

----------------------

Edan slumped against the wall of his new prison, defeated. He wasn't getting out of here soon. As the adrenalin wore off, he started to think of home...

A low vibration came out of nowhere, startling Edan. It made the tunnel hum slightly. He tried to figure out where the noise was coming from, but it seemed to be coming from everywhere.

After about fifteen seconds, it disappeared, as mysteriously as it had come.

His curiosity piqued, Edan stood up and brushed himself off. There had to have been a reason for that - and close by, too. He started searching the volcano again, this time, looking for the source of the noise.

-----------------------

"Echolocation negative," Jet said from his hovering position.

"Okay," Flame said. "Get out of there."

"Kay."

----------------------

Fifty meters down the tunnel, Edan found something new. A crack in the wall, that looked as if it had always been there. He stuck his nose to the millimeter crack, sniffing intently.

He picked up a scent, but it didn't register as first. It was the last thing he had expected to smell in a volcano. He drew another deep whiff, and let his brain sort it out.

He came up with the same answer, and backed away from the crack, mystified.

"_Motherboards?_"

------------------------

"Engaging echolocation."

Flame turned on the transmitter, and screwed up his face as a powerful wave of sound crashed through the volcano. It tried to tear into his head, but he fought back with everything he had.

Fifteen seconds later, he turned the emitter off, and activated the sonar readout. If there was any life down there, he would be able to spot the movement against the vibration of the rock, by the distortions it caused.

--------------------------

Edan felt that low hum again, and this time, he was able to guess where it came from. Through the crack. The sound pushed a wave of wind in front of it, and Edan could feel it against his face.

His curiosity overcame the danger of his situation, and he stood back. He was going to tear that wall down. He didn't attempt it earlier, for fear of creating a cave-in, but he was certain there was open space beyond that wall.

He went into the attack-ready stance, tensing all his muscles. He would only have one blow at this.

As he geared up for his assault, he felt the familiar white wisps of light building around him. Ever since the day he had discovered his latent HEAV abilities, he had lost no time - and no effort - in disciplining himself in it's use.

The white glow settled over his body, and he could feel the boost in power. He stared the wall down - this was it.

"HEAV activate!"

The glow burst into a cacophony of light around him. He brought his arm up, rallying it all into a central point in his fist. Then he ran forward, bringing his arm back, propelled by the pure energy...

"ROCK BREAKER!"

-------------------------

Kaida was standing at the lip of the volcano's cone, looking down. There seemed to be little dancing lights down there. It was probably just a trick of the distance, she thought, as she looked at the sonar emitter in her hands - a silver object about the size and shape of a football.

"Preparing to echolocate," she said, flipping a switch on the side of the device. There was a high-pitched whine as the capacitors charged, preparing for the intense fifteen second burst.

She looked down the volcano's pipe again. She would toss the emitter in, and immediately go to sonar. The structure of this volcano's rock was more brittle than the others, and wouldn't hold a sonic vibration. However, she was prepared to forfeit the emitter, because she knew that the other two had failed.

This was the only volcano that Edan could possibly be in.

She hit a five-second timer switch on the side of the device.

"Engaging echolocation!" she yelled.

Immediately following that, there was a massive explosion down in the volcano. She could see red flames - and white HEAV traces - filling up the cone. In those three seconds, she completely forgot about the transmitter.

It kicked into gear right next to her head, blasting her with more power than her eardrum could handle. The shock threw her off her feet, and down into the mouth of the volcano.

Were it not for the sheer blast of sound now following her down the volcano, the Digimon below would have heard her screaming. And had it not been for the blast of flame and smoke, they would be looking up.

As it was, they were staring down a battered Guilmon that had literally just popped out of the wall.

---------------------------

Edan didn't know what he was expecting to find, so somehow, he wasn't surprised to find a remote Military command post. A massive plasma display had been set up on one end of the volcano cone's floor, and several racks of speakers stood next to them.

The noise had come from them, he thought. They probably had subterranean sonar here, to monitor the area, and they were probably picking up distant disturbances.

In the middle of the floor was a holographic projector, currently switched off. Several Digimon were standing around it, now all staring at Edan as he had landed from his fall.

Three seconds later, there was another explosion, as Kaida hit the ground. The sonar emitter stopped with a splat, and Edan rushed for the nearest Digimon, intending to disable him.

The nearest Digimon turned out to be an ExVeemon, and before Edan could launch into a fight, he was ready. His first kick failed to connect, as did his second. But by the time he came around for the next kick, the ExVeemon was gone. Confused, Edan looked down, where the ExVeemon lay sprawled, a bullet hole though his head.

Edan stablilized and looked up, just as Jorcy landed out of goddamn nowhere.

"Boo!" Jorcy yelled, letting rip with his pistols. About 0.37 seconds later, every enemy Digimon in the room was dead.

Edan looked at Jorcy, who looked back at Edan. Edan looked at Jorcy some more, who turned away to look at Kaida, who was also looking at Jorcy.

Jorcy scratched his head, looked at Edan, Kaida, and the dead Digimon. Suddenly, it dawned on him.

"You weren't expecting me, were you?"

-----------------------------------


	6. Chapter 6: Briefing

"Ok, now that we're all here," Flame began, gesturing around the table. The table was made of a very expensive-looking type of wood, and situated in the Chelone briefing room. Everyone was seated around the table, including Edan, who was still recovering from his ordeal.

"Let's bring eachother up to speed, before we go any further. Jorcy - what did you find?"

Jorcy looked up. "A new taste in music..." he began, then saw the look on Flame's face.

"Jorcy." Flame said, and Jorcy raised his claws in surrender.

"Okay, okay," he said, getting up and moving to the massive operational map on the wall.

"The Northern Army is pushing this front," he said, drawing an invisible line with one of his talons. "One of the mon I spoke to thought that their attack pattern looked like a search. They're looking for something, and my best estimation, is that it's somewhere here," Jorcy concluded, pointing at the capital of the Southern Kingdom.

"Thank you, Jorcy," Flame said, and Jorcy went back to his seat.

"Kaida?"

She remained seated as she talked. "The runes on the cliff face belong to an ancient Digimon race, and they formed a portal to a volcano well within the Southern Kingdom. Edan..." she said, then caught herself and kept going. "...ventured through the gate, and uncovered what appears to be an enemy outpost."

"Edan?" Flame asked, moving right along.

"The technology definitely belonged to the Northern Army. They somehow managed to set up a listening post and command station in that volcano."

"In the middle of friendly territory," Flame said. Kaida nodded.

"It's possible that they used a rune gate similar to Edan's to get there."

Flame fell silent, as he considered the implications. If the Northern Army had uncovered more of those gates, there was no telling what the extent of their influence would be - they might even infiltrate the Chelone plane.

"I need to notify Gennai," Flame said, looking at the rest of the group. They looked startled at the statement, but each of them knew it was necessary.

"Jorcy, I want you and Kaida to go back to that volcano and scour every last inch. I don't want to have missed anything - clear?"

They both nodded.

"Jet, you will be on plane defense while I'm gone."

Jet shrugged. "Babysitting, eh?"

"Edan," Flame continued, feigning ignorance. "I want you to remain here and fully recover."

"But..." Edan began.

Flame shook his head. "You've been through a lot. Rest for at least the next eight hours. I will probably only be back by then, and we can move forward."

Edan nodded, and Flame returned his gaze to the rest of the table in general.

"I don't need to tell you the implications of this," he said, waving his claw in the direction of the map behind him. "I realise full well that we are an isolated plane that doesn't meddle in the affairs of others, but these rune gates change everything. No more slacking off. This is a war, and it's a war that may reach even us - as Edan testified to. Are we clear on this?"

The stony faces was all Flame needed to see, before he nodded.

"Excellent. Well then, let's get going. Meeting dismissed."

* * *

"Edan," Kaida called. Edan had left the boardroom, and was heading straight for his quarters. Flame and Jet were talking about something in private - as usual - and Jorcy had left for the prep bay. They were the only two in the hall. Edan let Kaida catch up. 

"What's up?" he asked.

She looked confused for a second, then recovered. "How's the shoulder?" she asked, gesturing at Edan's left shoulder.

Edan looked at it - partly to play along, and partly to mask his face. It had taken a minor sprain in the volcano, and the medical Digimon had put a slightly-flexible cast on it. It wasn't a serious injury, and Kaida's hurried question made it evident that she wasn't really interested in it either.

"It's fine," Edan said, looking back at her. She was looking at the ground, and Edan could tell she was trying to compose her next sentence.

"Kaida," he said, and she looked up. He looked her straight in the eyes. "It's okay."

She shook her head. "I overreacted, when I shouldn't have. I'm sorry."

"Hey," he said, grinning. "I think both of us were overreacting at that point."

She smiled slighly too, but as her memories traced themselves out, her frown returned, and she shook her head again.

"I shouldn't have retaliated like that. There's no telling what could have happened..."

"Kaida," he said, placing a claw on her arm. "Neither of us knew,"

She looked down at his claw, then looked away at some indeterminate point on the 'floor.

She tried to say something, but Edan cut her off with an unexpected hug.

"I'm still here," he whispered. "I'm still alive."

She said nothing until he pulled away a few moments later. She looked up at him, and Edan could see that she was really serious about her apology. They held eachother's gaze for a few moments - neither really knowing what to say to the other - before Kaida suddenly looked to her left, where the prep bays were.

Something heavy had dropped, and she could hear Jorcy cursing at whatever it was. She chuckled.

"I guess the fun around here never stops," she said, looking back at Edan, who was also smiling.

"I suppose you'll have to see to that," he said, and she nodded. They gave eachother one last look, before Edan patted her on the shoulder, and sent her towards the prep bays with a gentle push.

He watched her go a few feet, then turned and continued heading for his quarters. With a much lighter step.

* * *

Jorcy was hopping around like a maniac, clutching his foot in pain. A massive, black, cylindrical _thing_ lay in the floor. _In_, Kaida noted - it's fall had dented the floor quite a bit. 

She looked back up at Jorcy, who had stopped, and was still holding on to his foot.

"What, exactly, is this thing?" she asked, pointing at the black object embedded in the floor.

"Gun," he said through clenched teeth.

"Gun." she said, looking at it. "You call that a gun? It's more like a damned _cannon_, Jorcy. What the hell is it _doing_ here?"

"GAU ... 8. Army ... surplus," he managed to say. "Jet's."

"Ah, Jet." Kaida said, looking back at it. "Well, we can get Jet to get rid of this thing later. As soon as you calm down, could we kindly get ready to leave?"

Jorcy glared at her, then looked back at his foot which, Kaida noted, was a lovely shade of violet. She sighed.

"I'll call medical."

* * *

_A/N: I make several references to a "Medical" section in Chelone. There is actually one, manned (as such) by reprogrammed Digimon. It functions as one of Chelone's support structues. There's also a mechanical team, and a few others. They're mostly invisible during the course of the story, though. _


	7. Chapter 7: Enemy Lines

Uncaring eyes flashed over the wreckage. Computer components, glass, twisted bits of metal, and unidentifiable debris were littered over the inside of the volcano cone's floor. The air was still warm, smelling of roasted motherboards and something else...

The Cyberdramon identified it immediately. Augmented flame-based attack. Probably from a Virus type, he decided.

Looking over the wreckage, he realised he would have to report back to his leader. Those pitiful fools that had manned the post had obviously slacked off. Their bodies were nowhere to be seen, but the Cyberdramon wasn't surprised. Deceased Digimon broke up into their constituent data and dispersed about twenty minutes after death, if the data wasn't absorbed or otherwise contained.

He tensed his legs, and leapt into the air. With furious wingbeats, he accelerated into the sky. And just before he cleared the lip of the exit, a glow built up around his body, and he vanished.

Less than two seconds later, Jorcy and Kaida appeared over the horizon.

* * *

They were both running at a furious, yet timed, pace. Kaida easily managed to keep up to Jorcy, but he wasn't using HEAV right now. If he was, she thought, he'd have torn a hole in the sonic barrier a long time ago. 

It has been less than four minutes of sustained pace from Chelone. They were nearing their destination, and  
Kaida started slowing down. The volcano loomed above them, a massive cone sticking out of the rocky land surface. Kaida would climb it by running up, and Jorcy was already on his way to leaping up the thing in one go.

Kaida watched as he tore into the sky, then diverted her attention forward. Fifteen seconds of intense leaps,  
grabs, pulls, pushes, and general gravity defiance brought her to the top of the three-hundred climb. Then she looked down the vertical drop. It was about 350 metres down. Jorcy was already falling, and she took a leap.

Unlike the last time, she wasn't being caught off guard. She managed to slam into the floor with a massive bang, compressing and splitting the rock, but taking no damage.

She stood. Jorcy was already looking around, his holstered pistols reflecting the light from above. The cave was very dim, Kaida realised. Her eyes were already adjusting, but she figured they could use better light.

Silently thanking Flame for this long-lost technique, she brought the palms of the claws together, and whispered something in a foreign tongue. A small ball of fire appeared between her talons. Then she aimed them up, and fired.

The ball spread into a ring, and eventually slammed into the walls of the volcano. But instead of dispersing,  
the fire held it's shape. Kaida raised her left claw to the ring, and muttered something else.

The ring of fire burst into an intense white light. Jorcy - even through his visor - had to blink hard to readjust. He looked back at Kaida, who was already going about the search.

His eyes narrowed, as he tried to think of how she was able to do that. He had seen the technique before - when Flame had lit up a cave under Chelone for construction - but he had never seen it anywhere else.

Jorcy shrugged it off. Maybe it was because she was a Guilmon. Maybe it was a compensation for her weaker HEAV ability. He didn't mind either way. But he would make a point of finding out later. He got back to his searching.

* * *

Damian looked out the window, as a dark flying Digimon appeared over the horizon, emerging in a flash of light. He smiled to himself, but it wasn't a happy smile. It was a sadistic grin. He was the only person around, though. 

He stepped away from the window, and went looking for his cellphone. Living in this castle had it's problems. He never thought that he's refer to space as a problem, until he started losing things. Still, coming from the cramped ghettos of New York had taught him a new appreciation for room.

Damian was human. Probably the only pure human in the Digital World - the rest could shift into Digimon forms. He had been picked up in the slums by a government agent, and put to work here. He didn't know the exact motives behind his presence, but all he _did_ know was that he wasn't working for the good side.

Not that he gave a damn. The world owed him everything, and his bitterness wasn't going to let up soon. Even though he was still only sixteen.

There was a thud as the Cyberdramon landed in the prep bay of the castle. This castle belonged to one of the Princes of the Northern Kingdom, and had been given to him - and his team - to use for the duration of the war. Officially, they were a special tactics support team for the Northerns, but the G-Woman had taken several decisions that weren't exactly in line with that mission.

Damian didn't mind either way. He served her, no matter what. Especially since he had been flung into the Digital world. He had no friends or allies here, save for her. And the Cyberdramon that had just appeared around the corner.

He preferred that they refer to him as "Cyber", and Damian presently greeted him with that. Cyber nodded at him, then disappeared into another room, presumably searching for a telephone.

Damian flipped open his phone, and hit a speed-dial key. He also had an important call to make.

* * *

Jorcy poked at another pile of wreckage. The search was turning out fruitless. All they were learning was that these guys had had quite a bit of time to set up. 

"Found something!" Kaida called from all the way across the floor. Jorcy looked over at her - she was kneeling on the floor, bent over something.

"What is it?" Jorcy called, starting to move over to her.

"A high speed data trunk," she said. He arrived at her side, and looked down. There was a square hole in the  
floor, about twelve inches deep. At the bottom of that was a black box. Kaida had flipped the lid, uncovering a three-inch thick fiber-optic cable. The cable was clear, and glowing in a profusion of blue, purple, and white.

"Right," Jorcy said. "It's still active," he noted.

Kaida nodded. "Indeed, Captain Obvious. And it's a solid cable, which means that it will physically lead somewhere. Maybe to the homebase of whoever put it here."

"Really? Well then, start digging," Jorcy said, feigning hurt. They were more than used to this kind of joking around, and Kaida shrugged it off.

"At least we'll have something to show Gennai when he arrives. He will be able to trace the other end from here."

"Right," Jorcy said, suddenly remembering Flame's words. And the reaction it had brought. Even Jorcy had wondered if Flame was making a wise choice.

For a very long time, Gennai had been in hiding. When the present Digimon empire discovered that he had been harboring Shifters, he had to flee. He still had a secret communications link into Chelone, though, and they had kept intermittent contact. But bringing him here would be a massive risk.

But if there was more at risk than what appeared at the surface level - which was the general consensus - then bringing him here would be their only option.

He wondered where Flame was. Gennai was hiding in a special safe-house back on Earth. In Paris, if Jorcy recalled correctly...

* * *

_A/N: For readers of the original TSP: This story has a whole lot of differences from the original series. Whether or not Jared will take the time to make them line up, is up to him. Don't be surprised if some really unexpected stuff happens :)_


	8. Chapter 8: Paris, France

The weather was especially cold in Paris tonight. Flame had to grab an extra scarf from the wall rack before heading out the door.

"Florence," he reminded himself. Having a human name was usually the first step towards not getting your cover as a Digimon blown. He hadn't used one for years, but today might be a good day to get back in the habit.

Florence headed out the door, and on to one of the many side alleys of France, at two 'o clock in the morning. The way that Gennai had set things up was quite convenient. The Digi-gate was in a rented garage, and he had bought the lot under a false name. All the safe houses were apartments, and were within walking distance of the garage.

Gennai should be in safe house three, Flame thought.

"_Florence,_ damnit," Flame said to the empty air as he stomped down the alley.

* * *

Gennai, as it turned out, wasn't in Safe House Three. Florence stood at the door, having already knocked three times and recieved no response. He would try House One next. It was a fifteen minute walk through the poorly arranged streets. 

Florence headed for the stairwell. No time to waste.

* * *

This time, he struck gold. There was a movement inside, and a light snapped on. With rising anticipation, Flame waitied to meet his old mentor again. After so many years, would they even recognise eachother? 

As the door swung open, Flame almost began a torrent of a greeting until he saw the short, dumpy woman standing there, curlers in her hair and looking as if she had just met a sewage worker in the middle of his summer shift.

Flame wondered if the screwed-up look was normal for a woman of her stature, and had to get his thoughts back in order as she blasted him with French.

_Shit_, he thought to himself. He hadn't kept his French up to standard since he had last been here, and he had lost all grip.

"Sorry," he said, raising his hands. "I speak no French."

The woman gave him a look of pure contempt, and slammed the door in his face.

"Oh...kay," Flame said, turning around. A man was standing behind him, a massive grin on his face.

"Priscilla's normally like that, this time of the morning," he said. Flame just looked at him.

"Er, hi," he said, unsure of where to begin. "Who are you?"

"That witch's poor husband," he said. His voice gave him away as not being French by descent, but Flame couldn't place the accent. "Not for too long, though," he continued. "So tell me - what brings an Englishman to a Parisian door at two 'o clock in the morning?"

Flame had to process that sentence before responding. Good thing that Digimon neurons functioned about a hundred times faster than that of humans.

"I'm looking for someone that used to live here. A man by the name of 'George Constipoulous'," Flame said, hoping his Greek pronunciation was up to standard.

"Ah yes, George," the man said. "He moved out of Paris after he sold the house to us," he said. Flame's face fell.

"You look disappointed," the man noted. "Would you like me to fetch his address?"

Flame shook his head. "No thank you. That will not be necessary."

"Not even his mobile phone number? I'm sure he hasn't changed it in the two weeks since he left."

Flame looked up. "Two weeks?"

The Parisian husband nodded. "More like seventeen days, to be exact. Gave us the whole house, plus furniture at a massive discount."

Flame thought. Seventeen days ago ... Something clicked. Emergency protocol.

He looked up again. "Thank you for your time, Mr...?"

He smiled and shook his head. "No problem. Enjoy your day."

Flame walked past him, and down the street. He knew what to do next.

* * *

The man watched him go, eyes narrowed. Then he pulled out a cellphone and hit a speed dial key. 

"C? ... He was just here. ... Gennai. ... Will do."

He hung up the phone, cast one last look at the house, and turned down the street, heading in the opposite direction as Flame. Soon, he disappeared beyond the street lights. The shadows obscured his transformation. And his lift-off ten seconds later.

* * *

Flame had returned to the garage. With his own key, he let himself in. And, as he had been expecting, Gennai was waiting for him. 

Flame was about to greet him, when Gennai raised his finger to his lips, and beckoned Flame closer. He obeyed, unsure of what was going on.

To Gennai's right, a laptop had been set up. Gennai was pointing at it, and Flame looked.

The screen was split. On the left, there was a photo of him, talking to the Parisian man. It looked like it was taken from the upper level balcony of the house he was visiting. Gennai must have installed a camera, but why...?

Gennai shook his head, then pressed a key on the laptop. A green box centered around the stranger's face, and dragged it to the right side of the screen, where it expanded to fill the empty space.

Green crosses appeared all over the face, as it was scanned. Flame watched, still not entirely sure what was going on. Then a box popped up with the answer:

"Type: Digimon"

So the man's a Digimon in disguise? Flame looked back at Gennai, who shook his head again, and pointed at the laptop.

The man's face had been extrapolated into a 3-D model, and the computer was working at it, trying to figure out what the Digimon form looked like. All Flame saw was a profusion of green crosses and boxes.

Without warning, they stopped. A thick green line appeared at the top of the screen, and wiped down. Three seconds later, Flame was looking at a Cyberdramon.

But not just any Cyberdramon.

He looked back at Gennai, eyes wide. Gennai looked at him for a second, then moved past him, closing the laptop and putting it in a backpack. Signaling for Flame to stay silent, he went to the Digital Gate interface - a dusty-looking ancient computer terminal - and typed something.

Then he moved towards the door, beckoning Flame to follow. A few moments later, they were outside. They walked down the road, disappearing into the shadows afforded by a dumpster. There, Gennai crouched. He had a good view of the door.

Flame crouched next to him, completely hidden in the shadows. It wasn't too long before their quarry arrived. Flame looked on with interest.

* * *


	9. Chapter 9: Gennai Returns

A winged Digimon landed at the door. It was the Cyberdramon, and Flame shrank back a little as the Digimon looked up and down the alley. Then it leaned closer to the door. Flame couldn't see his face, but he was sure that the Cyberdramon's eyes were closed, and that he was trying to hear inside.

After about fifteen seconds, the Cyberdramon took a step back, satisfied that there was no noise coming from behind the door. He lifted his claw to the lock, and pressed hard.

The door swung open silently, and he stepped inside. Flame could see him pause just inside the doorway, his back turned to the alley.

Gennai brought his hand up. He was holding a small silver tube, with a red button on the end. Nonchalantly, he pressed the switch.

A powerful, blue-tinged EMP wave erupted from the small garage, stunning the Cyberdramon, and causing the lights in the alley - and several in the buildings above - to blow. Gennai stood up, did something to the tube, and hurled it away.

"Come," he said to the still-crouched Flame. "We have to get to the secondary exit."

Flame stood, frowning. "Secondary exit? I thought there was only one?"

Gennai smiled at Flame. "Don't think. Let's go."

* * *

The secondary exit happened to be located within a locket convenience store. Gennai stood outside, holding his chin in thought. It was a 24-hour store, and there was no reason for it to be closed. Eventually he turned to Flame. 

"Would you happen to have a cellphone on you?"

Flame shook his head. "No, why?"

"Well, the proprietor of this store will not be too impressed when he comes back."

Flame looked at Gennai. "What do you me..."

Gennai swung his fist at the locked door. Right before it made contact, he stopped, snapping his fist into a palm.

The door was ripped off its hinges and flung into the store. Flame could hear breaking glass as the door smashed into something. But all he could do was stare at Gennai's outstretched arm.

"Wh..."

"Let's go," Gennai said, walking into the store as the alarms began to sound.

* * *

The familar rush of transcending the divides rushed over Flame, and he opened his eyes. He was standing on a cracked runway, in the middle of a plateau. Clear blue skies stretched out above him, and there wasn't a cloud in sight. A gentle breeze brought with it the scent of the ocean. 

He smiled. He was home.

With a ripple of light, he discarded his human form. When he re-emerged as the Flamedramon he was, he stretched. Nothing felt as good as being back to his native form.

"Wow," Gennai said, looking around. "I like what you've done with the place."

Flame chuckled. "You didn't necessarily leave us with much."

Gennai returned the smile. Now that Flame was out of a high-pressure situation, he was able to get a clearer look at him. Gennai had reverted to a thirtyish-year old adult form, with slightly curly dark brown hair, and playful brown eyes. As was his nature, but Flame was beginning to suspect that there was even more that Gennai was hiding.

Gennai had been Flame's mentor ever since he was rescued from ... Flame caught himself at the memory, and brought himself back to the present.

"Unfortunately, a decoration appraisal is the last thing on the agenda," Flame said.

Gennai nodded. "Yes. I know of your troubles with the Northern Kingdom. I would have come myself, had the need arisen. So obviously, you've discovered something I'm unaware of."

Flame shook his head. "Nothing groundbreaking. But I thought it would be better that you were here. Something about all of this doesn't feel right."

"Ah," Gennai said, nodding. "Intuition. Useful, but can be easily confused."

Flame shrugged. "Well, you're here now."

"Indeed I am. Where is the rest of the team?"

"Two are scouting, Jet's defending Chelone, and Edan's resting."

"So I'm assuming that Jorcy and Kaida are still out?"

Flame wasn't surprised at Gennai's deductive speed. He wasn't human, after all.

"No. But they should be on their way back."

"Good," Gennai said, looking into the sky, where a dark form was rapidly approaching. Flame noticed that he was looking into the sky, and turned to look just as Jet slammed into the ground. It was a controlled landing, though, and Jet stood up quickly.

"Gennai," he said in what could have passed for a greeting.

"Hello, my dear Jet. Glad to see you haven't changed at all."

Jet grunted. "Wish I could say the same about you,"

Gennai laughed. "Times, Jet. Well, let's get inside."

Flame nodded, but didn't move. Gennai caught that before he started moving himself. Flame looked at Jet, who shrugged, sighed, and hit a switch on an arm-mounted computer.

The ground under them shook, as a massive circle carved itself out of nowhere. With a mechanical hiss and whine, it started sinking into the ground. Soft sirens were sounding from below - where the primary preparation bay was.

Gennai looked at Flame, speaking over the servos and alarms. "I'm_really_ liking what you did with the place, Flame."

* * *

"Before I begin - it's really good to see you all again. Though I wish the circumstances were different." 

They were all seated in the briefing room again. Even though eight hours had passed, they were still as alert and ready as ever. Edan was awake. His shoulder had healed, and he was back to normal.

Gennai waved at a map behind him. "I've been keeping track of the movements of the Northern and Southern kingdoms, and I'm well aware of the war. What else have you learned?"

"We found a remote observation post in a nearby volcano," Kaida said. "That post still has an active hardline data trunk, and we should be able to trace it's origin."

Gennai nodded. "I'll give you the tools you need. Anything else?"

"The soldiers," Jorcy said, looking up. "They weren't military by a long shot - looked more like mercenaries to me."

"What, in the whole half-second you saw them?" Jet asked. Jorcy nodded.

"I searched their bodies for ID afterwards, you know. Take that time up to ten minutes."

Jet shrugged and sat back. "Whatever."

"Any ideas on where they're from?" Gennai asked. Jorcy shook his head.

"Whoever trains Digimon for at least fifteen years, and equips them with the latest in military technology. Just about any army force in both worlds."

"Okay. Well, now I'll tell you why it was a good idea to call me. And then we will move as quickly as possible to secure our bases. There's plenty of things you don't know about the Chelone plane, and it's about time you learned."

"Like the rune gates?" Flame asked. He had no way of knowing whether or not Gennai knew.

"Ah, so you found them. Yes - I built the 'rune displacement network', as I call it. The hub for the network sits under this base. It might be a good idea to give you the keys, so to speak."

Flame stared at him, as did Edan and Kaida. "You _built the things_?!"

Gennai nodded with a smile. "I told you there was plenty you didn't know about this plane," he said with a wink. Flame sat back, processing what he had just learned.

"You guys had better get to bed quickly," Gennai said, getting fresh stares from everyone. "You'll need the rest," he explained. "And while this plane is still secure, it's your current best option."

Silence all around. They had just summoned the mastermind of this entire plane, to learn that they had to go to bed.

"Flame, you're coming with me for now. There's something I have to show you."

Flame nodded and stood, and the rest quickly followed. Jorcy and Edan immediately shuffled out, and Kaida stuck around for a few more seconds before she left herself. Jet looked from Flame to Gennai, and back again. Neither were speaking. He shrugged and left the room.

Flame looked up at Gennai, who had his eyes closed, lost in deep thought. Eventually he opened them, and looked at Flame.

"Let's go."

* * *


	10. Chapter 10: Secrets

Cyber's eyes slowly flickered open. He didn't know how long he had been out, but the cold and the wind had managed to wake him. He was lying in the alley, right next to the garage. He tried - and failed - to sort through his recent memories. He remembered standing at the door, and then a massive blast that had knocked him out. Nothing more...

Shaking his head, he sat up, feeling distinct weakness in his muscles. Whatever that blast had been, it was intense. He was probably lucky to be alive.

With a grunt, he pulled himself to his feet, swaying slightly, eyes closed. Trying to regain full control. It didn't take too long before he was back to normal.

The garage was empty. His quarry had probably escaped. Paris was approaching pre-dawn light. It was time to leave. He would have to report his failure back to her. She probably already knew, anyway.

Tensing his legs, he leapt into the air. It took him five seconds to disappear into the clouds above Paris. He started making his way back to his entrance point - a rusty car abandoned on a nearby railroad. He would be back soon - and the sooner, the better.

* * *

Flame followed Gennai down the hallways of the old Chelone complex. Since Gennai had left them the base, Flame had done a lot to build on to it, and the older part was rarely used any more. Eventually Gennai stopped at a wooden-veneered door. It was the door to his old office. Without hesitation, he entered. 

His office - strangely - was round. A big brown leather chair sat against the curved wall, opposite the door. The floor was made of some sort of metallic substance - Flame couldn't really tell. The entire ceiling was one big light. Gennai walked into the center of the tiny room, and waved Flame in.

Flame obliged, and the door closed behind him, locking with an ominous thunk. Gennai stood at the other side of the room - less than one foot from Flame.

"Flame," he said. "I've trusted you for a very long time, and I've shared many things with you. You have never violated that trust, and I thank you for it."

Flame nodded, wondering why Gennai was telling him this. Gennai paused for a second, then continued.

"When you came to me, I was a completely different person. My aims and motives were not as wholesome as they are now. Please forgive everything you see - as it belongs to my former life. It will now be used in the service of the Light - as it's been used for the last twenty years."

"Gennai," Flame began, but Gennai waved him down and continued speaking.

"Soon, I will need to leave Chelone again. For the safety of the plane, neither of the kingdoms can know that I am here. What I am about to entrust to you, well ... keep it silent."

Flame couldn't help but smile at the reference. Gennai looked at the ceiling.

"EVA - Activate."

* * *

"_Good afternoon, General. It's been quite a while._" The voice was female, synthetic, and unnerving. 

"Who is that?" Flame asked.

Gennai looked at him. "Remember what I said earlier?"

"That there's plenty I don't know about this plane?"

Gennai nodded, and looked up again.

"EVA, bring us down."

* * *

Cyber landed lightly in the prep bay. Cindy was already waiting for him. Despite her innocent-sounding name, Cyber knew her as one of the cruelest and coldest human beings he had ever met - and in his lifetime, he had met quite a few. He was basically her slave, though he could choose to leave at any time, if he wanted. But like Damian, he had no other real place to go, and so he stuck around, doing work that was suited to him anyway. 

"Report." Cindy said.

"Flamedramon and the General escaped. They must be back in the Digital World."

She gave him a cold stare from behind flawless blue eyes. "I thought I told you to_capture them_, Cyberdramon. Correct me if I'm wrong."

Cyber shook his head. "You're right. But they managed to stun me and escape. At the cost of their primary digital gate."

She smirked. "You realise that that is an insignificant compensation for their loss?"

Cyber said nothing.

"If they're back here, then it means that they'll be on to our scent," Cindy said. "Especially since your forces managed to lose the volcano. Get back there and wait for them."

"Understood," Cyber said, and prepped to fly.

Cindy was about to stop him, but then let him go, watching his dark form disappear into the setting sun. Night was falling in this sector of the Digital World, and it would make his task easy. Wait for a bunch of hapless Digimon, and storm them.

Cindy turned and left the prep bay. She had more important work to do.

* * *

A red light spilled over the floor. Flame looked down, then back up at Gennai. He wasn't necessarily worried, but what on earth was... 

With a jolt, the floor started to move. Downwards. Flame watched as the floor seperated from the wall. There was total darkness beyond - no lights, no sound. However, given the echoes from the lift machinery, Flame judged that this was a very big room. How Gennai had managed to fit all this down here, Flame didn't know.

The floor stopped moving. Flame looked around - but there was nothing. Light from the room above spilled downwards in a neat cylinder, highlighting the lift, and bleeding over to the edges, revealing a metal floor.

Without warning, a yellow light appeared in the darkness, about one foot from the lift. Then another appeared, a foot beyond it. Rapidly, a line of yellow lights appeared in the darkness. Then another line appeared, running parallel to it. There was a three-foot gap between the lines.

"Let's go," Gennai said, stepping into the darkness between the lights. Flame didn't know what he expected to hear. A thunk, maybe, of boot on metal? Maybe sand, or grass, or even water. What he wasn't expecting was the total nothingness which resounded from Gennai's footstep.

"Uh," Flame said, suddenly unsure of himself. "What the hell is this? Why can't I see the bridge?"

"It's a very special material," Gennai said, walking out over the darkness.

"Right," Flame said, tentatively placing a foot between the rows of lights. It was the strangest sensation in the world. It felt as if nothing was supporting him, but there was a force holding him up. He shifted his weight on to his foot, then lifted his other foot. The bridge didn't slip or falter, and soon, he was standing off the platform.

He chuckled nervously, and started walking forward - slowly. He had no reason to distrust Gennai, but the feeling of walking on air was quite unnerving. Gennai had already reached the end of the bridge, and was standing, looking back at Flame.

"Come on, we don't have all day!" he called, and Flame started walking faster.

Gennai turned, and looked at a small point of light embedded in the floor. It was actually a floor this time - a perspex protrusion from the edge of the chamber. Flame joined him on the platform. The yellow lights, hanging in space, flickered out, and the lift started moving back up towards the light. Flame watched it go, then looked back at Gennai.

This environment was very odd. Despite the fact that it was totally black, he could still see Gennai clearly, as if he was being illuminated by the sun. Maybe the walls were made of a special light-absorbing material? Flame couldn't really figure it out.

"Okay," Gennai said. "EVA - online!"

* * *

Flame watched as a small dot appeared, hanging over where the floor of the lift had been. At least, he guessed that's where it was. Judging distance was hard, in a totally black space with no reference points. The point grew a little, and then suddenly exploded, breaking up into a profusion of ribbon-shaped streams of light. 

They flew out, slamming into the walls of the chamber. The black turned to grey, as the light made it's way through thousands of little canals in the walls. Flame watched the light show, wondering what this could possibly be leading up to ...

With a massive bang, the walls came to life, blinding Flame for a second. When he recovered, he was amazed. He was standing in a massive sphere - probably half a mile in diameter. Every inch of the sphere was covered with displays, and they were all active, showing constantly shifting feeds from the entire Digital World.

He recognised them as they flew past. Chelone, the Server continet, the seperate kingdoms, several forests...

Flame looked at Gennai in amazement. How many more secrets did he have?

"EVA," he called out into the profusion of color. A ghostly white figure appeared, suspended in the air.

"_Yes?_" it asked.

"Synchronise with Earth Band."

EVA - as Flame assumed her name to be - vanished, and all the screens cleared. They were replaced with a logo pattern that he had never seen before.

"What is that?" Flame asked, pointing at one of the thousands of screens. Gennai sighed.

"A remnant I'd wish was rather not there."

Flame thought about his answer while the screens were replaced with new images. Flame watched in wonder - thoughts interrupted - as the Digital World built itself on the screens before them. It was like looking at a globe map of the Digital World - from the inside. Flame was rapidly getting lost in the infinite space.

"EVA, please check Chelone's anchors."

"_On it_."

"Anchors? You mean plane anchors, don't you?"

"Yes. Chelone is anchored in four places," Gennai explained. "One anchor is far away from here. Then there's a second anchor in the Northern Kingdom, one in the Southern Kingdom, and one on Earth."

"Earth? Why Earth?"

"Because an anchor does more than simply hold a plane in place. It connects one plane to another. The Digital World itself is probably the best example of this. It's basically a titanic plane, anchored in millions of places to Earth's communication networks."

"So, if a plane has no anchors, then what?"

"Imagine a computer with several hard drives. If the connection cable for a hard drive comes loose, what happens?"

Flame shrugged. "The computer can't pick up the hard drive any more?"

Gennai nodded. "Exactly. It can't find the harddrive. It doesn't know it's there. As far as the computer is concerned, the harddrive does not exist anymore. "

"But it is still there, right?"

"Yes. It might even still be receiving power from the computer, but it is not capable of talking to the computer any more. From the harddrive's perspective, though, it can't find the computer, either. To the harddrive, it's as if it's floating in an endless void, with nowhere to connect to."

"And that's what happens when a plane becomes disconnected?"

"Almost," Gennai said. "Planes exist in the dataspace around the Digital World. For a plane to be properly secured to the Digital world, it needs only two anchors. These keep the plane from drifting out of range. Chelone has four anchors. However, because of the Northern Army movement, I've had to disconnect that anchor. So currently, we're only connected by three."

"So if three and two are enough, what about when there's only one anchor left?"

"The winds of the Digital realm will strain against that anchor. Think of a plane as a very big kite in a strong wind. If the rope is strong enough, there is no problem. But if the rope is too weak, it will eventually stretch and snap, releasing the plane."

"And then?"

"The plane floats free. Contact will never be re-established with it. The truth is that there are thousands of void-planes out there - as I call them - planes that were disconnected by wars and other tragedies. There might be entire civilisations on those planes. If they had the technology to extend their own plane, they might even have grown them into seperate worlds. Worlds without the Sun of the Digital World require artificial lighting and heat, but such things are not difficult to achieve."

"Amazing," Flame said, looking back out over the control room. "But Chelone is secure, right?"

"For now," Gennai said. "The anchors should still be working just fine."

EVA beeped, and they both looked up as her ghostly form reappeared in the air.

"_Analysis complete. Earth anchor is online and stable. Server anchor is online and stable. Southern anchor is online and stable, but is likely to experience duress due to the Northern Army movements. The Northern anchor is offline as per your instructions.  
Gennai nodded to himself. "EVA, keep monitoring the anchors, and report any change to me."_

_"Understood."_

_"EVA, open the authorization subsystem."_

_A massive blue pane of light appeared in the air in front of them. It had a huge ID badge on it, with Gennai's face, name and other details._

_"EVA, add authorized user."_

_A blank ID card appeared below Gennai's._

_"Flame, please say your full name."_

_"Flamedramon," Flame said, and his name appeared on the card. He looked at it for a second, then back at Gennai, who was holding a small shard of glass in his hands. It was about the size of a baseball card._

_"Press your claw against this," he said, and Flame obliged. When he withdrew his claw, there was still an impression in the glass. Gennai looked at, then flung it at the massive holographic ID card suspended in the air. As the glass flew through, it vanished, and the words "SEQUENCING DNA" appeared._

_They cleared, and the ID card filled with the rest of Flame's details. Face, height, weight, evolutionary line, voice pattern - they all filled themselves in._

_"Save changes," Gennai said, and the card flashed._

_"It's done," Gennai said, looking at Flame. "You have full access to this system."_

_Flame nodded slowly, realising just how much power he had been given. But he knew that Gennai trusted him with it, and he knew that he would not betray that._

_"Let's go," he said, stepping to the edge of the platform._

_"EVA," Flame called. "Shutdown and lower the elevator."_

_"Complying," EVA said, as the screens switched off, the elevator started to descend, and the yellow walkway lights appeared._

_"Good," Gennai said, as he stepped out. "You always were a fast learner, Flame."_

_Flame smiled as he walked out. "I learn from the best, you know."_

* * *


	11. Chapter 11: Interlude

"Will you be keeping in touch?" Flame asked. Gennai shrugged.

"If possible, and necessary. But I'm sure you guys can survive on your own," he said with a smile.

Flame bowed his head. "Good luck."

"To us all," Gennai said, then opened his hand, releasing the stored energy. Gennai evaporated into nothingness right before Flame's eyes.

He turned to leave the room.

* * *

Flame found Kaida leaning against the outer door of the old hangar. It was the only piece of Chelone that still stuck out from under the ground, and Kaida loved coming here to stare out over the plane, and remember... 

Flame slid up beside her. "I thought you were in bed," he said. She started, and looked at him. When she saw who it was, she relaxed.

"It's only you," she said, returning her focus to the desert outside. Flame chuckled.

"_Only _me, Kaida?" Flame asked with mock surprise. Kaida laughed and shook her head.

"You know I didn't mean it that way," she said.

Flame returned the smile. "I know, I know," he said, siding closer to her, and looked out over the desert for himself.

Kaida sighed. "I guess this is it."

"Yeah," Flame said.

"Do ... do you really think I'm up to this?" she asked, sounding unsure of herself. Flame looked down at her with surprise. She was keeping her gaze fixed on the horizon.

He put an arm around her. "If anything, you're more prepared than I am."

"You think so?" she asked, looking up at him. He nodded.

"You've got the headstart I never had. Everything I know, I taught myself, and it's taken me a lifetime. You have all of that within you, and you still have a lifetime to go."

She nodded, and looked back at the horizon. "I guess so."

He shook her gently. "Don't _guess_ so - _know_ so."

She grinned. "Yes, master," she said, making Flame chuckle.

"We're long past that, Kai," he said, using the diminutive of her name. He was the only one who was ever allowed to call her that - everyone else got a fiery stare, and often a slap. But it was not a priviledge he had earned. It was one she had given.

"Heh. Yeah," she said. Then she sighed again. "I guess I have to get some sleep."

"That _would_ be a good idea," Flame said, then gave her a quick hug.

"Thanks," she said, smiling up at him before walking back into Chelone. Flame looked out over the plane again, laughed to himself at a private joke, then turned and walked into Chelone himself.

In a few hours, a few of them would move into the Southern Kingdom to check up on the Chelone anchor. Flame realised they might have to deactivate it, to prevent unauthorised access to the plane.

Jorcy was out at the volcano, attempting to trace the data trunk. When he was done, he would return with the results. Flame wondered how he was doing...

* * *

Jorcy had never been a technical person. Why Gennai had chosen him to do this was beyond him. He couldn't even figure out where to plug the damn thing in. 

Gennai had given him a trace emitter. A box the size of a cigarette pack, with a cable running out. All he had to do was plug the cable into the highspeed trunk, and the tracer would do the rest.

Simple in theory, but he didn't seem to find the port. After a few minutes of searching, he gave up and sat back. The cable in the trunk glowed at him with remarkable indifference.

"Okay, dammit," Jorcy said, sticking his claws back down the hole to figure it out. He closed the lid of the trunk, and the port was staring him in the face. Grunting with disgust, he brought the tracer out of his pocket, lowered it in to the hole, and plugged it in.

A red light blinked on, there were three beeps, and the light switched off. His work here was done.

He stood, stretched, and prepared to jump out of the volcano floor. The sun was setting - it wasn't time to hang around. With a final look around, he tensed his legs, went HEAV for a split second, and leaped into the air. The jump carried him clear out of the mouth of the volcano, and several hundred yards towards the Chelone entrance point.

Jorcy would be back in a matter of minutes, but even he could not outrun the trace signal that was, even now, making it's way to the base of the mysterious, unknown force.

But Jorcy wasn't the only one aware of the signal.

* * *

"Incoming trace," Damian said, pulling himself up to the computer bank. Cindy was already in the room, and she looked over. 

"Where's it coming from?"

"Volcano outpost three," Damian said.

"Goddammit," she cursed. "Can't that Cyberdramon do_anything_ right?"

"Scan shows he just arrived at the volcano."

"Well, it's too late. Can you mess up the trace?"

"Yeah - already on it."

"Good."

With a few deft keystrokes, Damian spiked the connection. Then he opened several others, linked them together, and diverted the trace. He watched with a grin as the tracer ran right past the castle, heading for a random location off the shore of the Southern Kingdom.

"Diverted to a fishing village," he said, then closed the connection. Cindy walked over, chuckling.

"You really are a smart one," she said, ruffling his wavy hair. Damian shrugged.

"This _is_ my game, after all."

"Indeed. Tell that Cyberdramon to make his way back."

"Will do."

Cindy nodded and left the control room. Damian got to work sending a message, then sat back, wondering what he could do next.

The tracer signal probably emanated from a mobile device, as there were no indications of activity in the volcano. He had only gotten the feed a few minutes ago - round about the time the trace started - and a thorough surface scan had shown nothing amiss.

It was probably a smaller device, plugged directly into the trunk. And that meant that it would be transmitting it's trace data to a nearby receiver. 'Nearby' could be several hundred miles, given the technology available in the Digital World.

He wondered if it would be possible to find out at which range the tracer box was transmitting. Maybe he could scan the area for any anomalies - such as the ones caused by receiving stations - and find out who was trying to trace them.

Damian shrugged to himself. It was worth a shot, he thought, and got to work.


	12. Chapter 12: Let the games begin

The trace had turned out more successful than he had anticipated. The transmitter was sending a direct subether stream to an anonymous relay node, about ten miles away from the volcano. An image scan of the area revealed nothing more than a large boulder.

Closer scans made it look as if the transmitter was buried within the boulder. Not surprising. What was surprising was the fact that the stream was relaying to nowhere.

It literally terminated inside the boulder.

Damian watched his screen, and pondered.

* * *

"Trace confirmed," Kaida said, watching her own instrument panels. "An abandoned castle in the Northern Kingdom - used to be under the direct ownership of the Army, but it was never used." 

"Was being the operative word," Flame said. "Well, all this does is confirms our suspicions. Would it be possible to find out who's currently using the castle?"

"Gennai might have been able to. But our best guess at this point is a extramilitary force." Kaida said, then furrowed her eyebrows and stared at a fixed point on the keyboard.

"Kaida?" Flame asked. "What is it?"

"I don't know," she said, shaking her head. "But for some reason, I feel there's a human behind it. A human female, if I'm not mistaken."

Flame raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

"And I know of very few human females with the governmental clearances to access the Digital World."

"Assuming this is a government lady," Flame said. Kaida nodded.

"But the gates _are_ extremely secure. And we'd have been alerted of any hack attempts."

"I'm not so sure," Flame said, and Kaida turned and looked at him.

"I know that the American and Japanese governments are indebted to us, etcetera, but something that Gennai said has been making me think."

"Oh?" Kaida asked. "What would that be?"

"That we'd be able to pull this thing off on our own. I don't know if he forgot we had the support of the American Government - but you know as well as I do that nothing ever slips his mind."

Kaida nodded again. "So you think they might have done a silent about-turn on us?"

Flame shrugged. "It's likely. Humans are notorious for their constant power struggles - and the lengths they'll go to to win."

Kaida chuckled and turned back to her computer screens. "I probably won't be able to look up gate traffic then."

"No," Flame said. "But either way, there's nothing we can do. If there's a human involved in this, then they're working for the Northern Army."

"But why?" Kaida asked without turning - she was busy entering a series of complicated commands.

Flame shrugged, the gesture lost on her. "I hesitate to think about it."

"Heh," Kaida said, punching a final key.

RED sent a signal via their plane gate, through the anonymous relay, and into the remote trace device, ordering it to stop the trace. The signal only took a split second to transmit.

And in that split second, Damian got the very break he needed.

* * *

But he didn't realise the break at first. All he knew was that his monitoring software had chimed with a new event. He saved the data he was working on, and switched focus back to the monitoring program. 

He had left the program to record the boulder for any unusual activity. And there had been some - an infinitesimally short burst of data. The monitor had managed to snatch that data out from the subether, and it came up on the screen.

It looked like a command to terminate a process. And it coincided with the trace stream shutting down. Didn't take a genius to figure out that someone had remotely terminated the trace on this connection. But there was something else. The monitor had picked up another burst of data that had preceded the connection. Damian brought it up on the spectrographic analyser. It was just a mess of light.

As he looked at it, though, he thought he saw patterns. Frowning, he ran the image through a database of known energy disruptions. The answer was not what he had been expecting.

_Interplane Interference_

"Interplane?" he asked to the empty space in front of him. He knew what "planes" were - a fascinating phenomenon that, unlike most others in the Digital World, he understood. Planes were like seperate islands floating in space, tied to the Digital World by means of datalinks commonly referred to as "anchors".

But apart from the anchors, a plane could have thousands of "gateways" to the Digital World. The gateways could be placed anywhere, provided there was an anchor that connected the plane to the Digital World. There were limitations on this - such as distance, and density - but there were always workarounds.

Damian realised that the boulder was a gateway to another plane - and that someone on that plane had sent the termination signal.

With rising anticipation, he ran the image against the plane database. It would take a while to search, and he watched the results panel with interest. A hit would mean that he had located the plane of origin - and the owners of that trace device. And, if he was right - and he normally was - the home base of the force that had destroyed the volcano outpost.

There was a chime, and a name popped up in the results list. Damian couldn't help but grin - he knew it very, very well:

Plane:**OB-27x-449-exo**  
Name: **Chelone**

_Chelone._

Damian grabbed his cellphone, hitting Cindy's speed dial number. She had to know about this.

* * *

"Trace terminated," Kaida said, then turned back to Flame. "What do we do now?" 

Flame thought aloud. "There's war coming. But it's not here yet - so the logical thing to do would be to make sure our bases are covered. Or rather, our anchors."

He looked up at Kaida.

"I want you, Edan and Jorcy to go to our Southern Continent anchor, and check up on it. I get the feeling that we may need to shut it down, to prevent the plane from being hacked."

Kaida nodded. "When do we leave?"

"Preferably immediately. Unfortunately, the closest gateway we have to the anchor is situated on the border between the Northern and Southern territories. Which means that once you get down there, you'll have to move very fast."

Kaida grinned. "HEAV says 'can-do'."

Flame shook his head. "I'm not so sure about that."

Kaida lost her grin. "Why not?"

"HEAV is about as subtle as a nuclear detonation in a nature reserve. And if we have a human contigent against us, they might have the resources to track you. This won't help. We need to remain as covert as possible with our movements. I don't think that these enemy humans know about us yet, and I'd like to keep it that way for as long as possible."

Kaida nodded and turned to her computers again. "Okay then. The best time to arrive would be nightfall. Disguise our gateway entrance in the solar descent flares. From there, a leisurely jog down to the Southern capital."

"'Leisurely' being?" Flame asked.

"Oh, about sixty miles an hour. Seeing as we don't have that much time, and the capital is about a hundred away from the border."

Flame smiled. "Remember to take some bottled water," he said with a wink, then turned to walk out of the room. Kaida chuckled to herself, then started preparing the gateway exit point.

They would leave in one hour. And with the element of surprise behind them, they would be able to get in, disable the anchor, and get out without being spotted.

Or so she thought.

* * *

"Chelone?" Cindy asked over the phone. She was back on Earth, but the signal was still clear. 

"Yeah," Damian said. "They were the ones who took out the volcano, I think."

Her grip on the phone tightened. "Damian, see to it that the castle is on a constant Level-5 alert."

"Level-5? But that's..."

"_Just do it_!" Cindy shouted, then jabbed the 'hang-up' button ferociously.

Chelone. Gennai and his Digimon lackeys. She felt her blood boil.

She had lost to them once before.

Not again.

Not this time.

She made another call. It was time to step things up.

* * *

"Alright guys," Flame said to the three that had assembled in front of him. "It's time to get involved in this war." 

He had already briefed them, and they all understood their missions. Each of them - Jorcy, Edan and Kaida - nodded.

"Just please be sure not to get spotted," Flame said, then took a step to the side. They were all standing on the runway outside the Chelone base. The heat of the day wasn't opressive, and the breeze was refreshing. At the end of the runway, there was an invisible barrier that, when crossed, would take them down to the Digital World.

Jorcy started running, and Edan and Kaida kicked into gear immediately afterwards. They traversed the 3000 foot runway in less than twenty seconds, and flung themselves at the barrier. Flame watched as their forms dwindled into the distance - and as they were consumed by a blinding flash of light.

They were in.


	13. Chapter 13: Captured

The boundary between the Northern and Southern kingdoms only existed on a map. In reality, it was an area of rolling green hills, sandwiched between two parallel mountain ranges. One of these hills had an outcropping of rock, and several massive boulders were scattered down the slope.

The air was dark, and it was an overcast night. Perfect conditions to contrast the blinding flash of light near the base of the hill. Three shadowy figures appeared out of nowhere, running at a constant - and very high - speed up the hill.

It took them less than three seconds to complete the hundred-metre climb. As they flicked over the top, they hit the ground running, accelerating to a blinding speed for manual running. The three of them drew together, and took the terrain in leaps and bounds.

Until an explosion appeared out of nowhere. Unable to change direction without severe injury, the three of them were flung into a massive net. As his momentum canceled, Jorcy was right out of the net.

The Digimon in front him looked menacing. A Cyberdramon. Jorcy tore out his pistols, fully intending to go HEAV and blast this Cyberdramon out of existence.

That was until a blue beam flashed out from behind a tree, slamming into him with a powerful jolt. Suddenly, he felt all his power draining, as an unknown force interfaced with his HEAV abilities - and bottomed them out.

He fell to his knees, dropping his pistols as his muscles went limp. He looked over to the source of the beam. It was a small device in the hands of a woman - tall, dressed in a dark suit, blonde hair. Jorcy had never seen her before, and was intent on doing her some seri...

Jorcy collapsed, fully drained. The Cyberdramon had already fired tranquilisers into the two Guilmon.

Cindy laughed. The capture had been easier than expected.

* * *

"No!" Flame yelled. He was watching the whole thing via a video feed in Gennai's secret control room. He watched as the human female took advantage of a weakness in Jorcy's HEAV activation sequence, draining him of all his power. Before Edan or Kaida could come around, Cyber had fired tranquilisers into them, and all three were lying on the ground, unconscious. 

Flame exited the control room with undue speed, ordering EVA to activate all of Chelone's defenses.

* * *

"Cyber, get these three to our main camp in the North," Cindy said, playing with the HEAV-drain device by tossing it into the air and catching it again. 

"Sure," Cyber said, looking back at the three, who were now bound.

Cindy looked smug. Her plan had worked, just a lot easier than she was hoping for. But on to more important matters. She pulled out her cellphone.

"It's me... Send reinforcements to my current location ... No, that will not be necessary." She hung up and nodded to Cyber. "Help's on the way. I'd better get back."

Cyber nodded as Cindy melted into nothingness right before his eyes.

* * *

"You can't go out there!" Jet said, pinning a struggling Flame to the wall. 

"Let me go, damnit," Flame shouted, struggling even harder. Jet hesitated, then swung his arm up, pressing Flame against the neck.

Flame knew the move, and forced himself to calm down. A few more centimeters of pressure, and Jet would start cutting off his air supply. He was serious.

"Jet," he said, "They were captured!"

"I know!" Jet shouted back. "Don't you think I want them back too?"

Flame was silent.

"Damnit, Flame," Jet said, releasing the pressure on his neck. "I want them back as badly as you do, but going out there with nothing but adrenaline won't solve anything. I shouldn't be the one saying this, Flame."

Flame took a deep breath and nodded. Jet released him completely and stood back.

"Now, are you back to normal?"

Flame shook his head, and looked up at him. "Not until they're back safe and sound."

Jet grinned. "Just the answer I was hoping to hear."

"Do you have a plan?"

Jet laughed and shook his head. "Damn, Flame, when are you ever going to learn? Of course I don't have a plan!"

"Just adrenaline?" Flame asked with a smirk.

"And experience. Get that EVA thingy of you to tell you where they've been taken. I'll be waiting at the exit door."

Flame nodded, and Jet turned to leave.

* * *

A quick visit to EVA's inner core had told him what he needed to know - they had been taken to the castle in the Northern Kingdom that Kaida's trace had fingered. Right into the hands of their current worst - or so it seemed - enemy. 

Flame didn't have a plan, other than to get them out. Given that it was a castle, they would probably be kept underground. He didn't know the kinds of defenses the castle had, however.

He was trusting his intuition as much as he was trusting Jet's skill at things like this. He sensed that they would need every ounce of skill and strength they had to pull this off.

* * *

Cyber finished dragging the last one in to the dungeon, then locked the door, leaving him inside with the new prisoners. He quickly stripped them of their weapons. Edan's cybernetic enhancements proved problematic, until he decided to install a global inhibitor. It would limit everything that was not mechanically enhanced - which was probably just his stomach and his left leg. 

Poor thing. But that didn't stop Cyber from chaining him to the wall just as he had done with Jorcy and Kaida. The Flamedramon, he noted, had gained a distinct shade of his natural blue after the HEAV drain. Being pure white like that, Cyber guessed that he was really powerful. In his normal state - and he was far from normal right now.

The dungeon was a part of Cindy's castle - a heavily defended, decaying, underground room. Three massive wooden doors stood between it and the outside world, and the castle itself was on high alert. Intruders would find it very difficult to get in - and even more difficult to get out.

Cyber grinned. He knew the plan. It was sheer genius, and it would probably work, too.


	14. Chapter 14: Rescue?

_A/N: This chapter was written to Scooter's __"The Logical Song", just for anyone who might be curious._

* * *

Edan slowly came to. The room came into focus, one bit at a time. The walls were a rough, weathered stone. There was almost no light, except a little that came through slits near the ceiling. 

He had a terrible itch on his thigh, and as he moved his arm to scratch it, he realised something was terribly wrong. He was chained to the wall.

As he looked over, he was somehow not surprised to see Kaida and Jorcy chained to the wall. In his befuddled state, it did not occur to him to panic.

And had he known what was parked just over the ridge, he would have no reason to panic anyway.

* * *

"Range, fifteen hundred meters," Jet said. He was lying down in the grass, a high-powered rifle propped under his arm, staring down the scope at the castle beyond. There was little between them and the castle. They were parked on a nearby hill, just over a small ridge. 

Flame was preparing to make a dash for the castle, and Jet would be defending. He looked over at Flame, who was knelt over in something like prayer. Jet sighed and returned his attention to the scope.

"Okay," Flame said, standing up. "You know the plan?"

"Mmm," Jet mumbled.

"Good," Flame said, taking a deep breath. "Well, let's get this party started."

With that, he leaped forward, hitting the ground running - and in less than ten seconds, had crossed the entire distance to the castle.

On the periphery of his vision, he saw flashes of light - gunshots. Before him was a massive wooden door. It was almost as if time was standing still. He brought up his claw, aimed at the lock, and prepared to swing.

His momentum, plus the power of the punch, would be more than enough to blow through the door. And from there, it was pure improvisation.

* * *

The hallway was silent. At one end was a massive wooden door that led outside. Down the hall on either side were smaller doors, and at the end of the door was another barricade, that led to the control center. Just to the left of the barricade was a tunnel entrance that led to the dungeons. 

The splinters were flying down the hall even before the sound of breaking wood echoed. The massive door exploded inwards, and a blue blur hit the floor, and came to a standstill. Flame was crouched, recovering from his high speed sprint, and looking around for the entrance to the dungeons.

Alarms started to sound, and he realised his time was up. He was looking at a small, arched wooden door, just to the left of a barricaded hallway. Something told him that this was the dungeon entrance, and he wasted no time moving towards it.

One of the hall doors burst open, and Digimon came spilling out, waving rifles at Flame. But he somehow managed to dodge all of them, as he flung his entire body at the door.

It came out easier than rotten wood, and he stumbled on the stairs, falling and rolling down. He quickly modified his roll, and as he hit the landing, he rolled forward once and stood up.

"Flame!" Jorcy shouted from the wall. Flame looked over, then looked back. The Digimon that had been chasing him were coming down the stairs.

The first one burst into the dungeon room - a Beelzemon. Flame raised his left claw at him.

"_Ignis Murus_," he said. Nothing seemed to happen at first, but then the ground under the Beelzemon burst into flame. He staggered back, clutching his face and screaming. Flame drew his fist back, then punched at the empty air in front of him.

The flames that had sprouted under the Beelzemon exploded backwards with terrifying force, racing up the stairs and vaporizing every Digimon still standing in the stairwell. Flame turned away from the carnage and faced his captured friends.

"Let's get out of here," Flame said, raising his claw at the chain mounts near the ceiling, and summoned a fireball. The explosion ripped through the wall, loosening their arm chains. Kaida and Jorcy immediately tore off their leg chains, but Edan slumped to the floor, unable to support himself. Kaida rushed to his side.

"What's wrong?" she asked, and he shook his head.

"Something's disabling my enhancements - I can't move."

"Carry him," Flame ordered, then drew his claws together.

"_Excellens flamma_." A massive fireball burst into existence between his claws. He looked up at the point where the ceiling met the opposite wall. There were several slits near the top, that let in light from outside.

With a roar, Flame unleashed the fireball at the slits. The resulting explosion shook the foundations of the castle, and flung a massive chunk of the wall out into empty space. The sheer intensity of the explosion knocked Jorcy flat, and sent several cracks running across the floor.

Flame heard a secondary explosion above him, and watched as the flames in the stairwell died down. He heard Digimon running, and realised that they were about to be stormed.

"Go!" he yelled, then ran back to the stairs, prepared to defend the three of them until they got out.

Jorcy lifted Edan's arms, and Kaida raised his legs. They ran to the tear in the wall. Jorcy jumped out, dragged Edan out to the surface, and helped Kaida out. Then he called back.

"Flame! Come on!"

Flame turned to face him for just an instant - and that was his mistake. Cyber came barrelling down the stairs, and slammed into him, taking him to ground.

"NO!" Jorcy shouted, watching as they were swamped by a squad of BlackAgumon.

"Go!" Flame yelled again, as he struggled with the Cyberdramon that was pinning him down.

Cyber looked up, saw Jorcy and Kaida, and yelled an order to his BlackAgumon. Several at the front broke away, heading straight for them.

"Shit," Jorcy muttered, then pulled Edan up to his shoulders. He started running away from the castle, and Kaida did the same. But the BlackAgumon were gaining on them. He didn't have enough energy to fight them off and run, and Kaida was straining at the seams already.

They were heading for a nearby ridge. Jorcy thought he saw movement, then several flashes. The pursuing Digimon screamed as they burst into their constituent data. The sniper's bullets were finding their marks. As Jorcy leaped over the ridge, the last BlackAgumon was taken out with a claw swipe from the ground below.

Jorcy collapsed, and Kaida came to a stop, barely tripping over him. She spun to face Jet.

"Flame," was all the could say. Jet looked back at the castle. A squad of BlackGreymon were storming down on them. Jet shook his head.

"Too late for him. We need to go."

"But," Kaida began to protest.

"Now!" Jet yelled, as he grabbed her around the waist, lifting her clean off the ground. Jorcy had already stood up, and as Jet tore past, he shouldered Edan and followed.

Three seconds later, one of the BlackGreymon stormed over Jet's rifle, snapping it in half by stepping on it. Jet and Jorcy were far ahead, though, and they gave pursuit even though there was no chance of catching them.

"Runegate twelve - activate!" Jet yelled at the boulder in front of him as he approached it. The circle of runes burst into light, and he grabbed Jorcy's shoulder, flinging him into it. He disappeared in a puff of light. Kaida followed, then Jet jumped through, knowing the gate would close with his exit.

* * *

"Hello, Flamedramon," Cindy said, standing over the disabled Digimon with a massive grin. Her plan had worked as expected - by imprisoning the others in a low security area, she had managed to ensnare the one Digimon she was after. 

"Cindy," Flame forced through gritted teeth. "You don't deserve to live."

Cindy laughed. "Quite a bold statement for someone in your position, Flamedramon. Tell me, what was it that drove you to rescue the other three?"

Flame glared at her. "Something I don't expect a _bitch_ like you to understand."

Cindy's grin faded, and she shrugged. "Like you, Flamedramon, I do what's necessary to get the job done. At the moment, however, that doesn't bode well for you." She nodded at Cyberdramon, who scooped Flame off the floor. Flame couldn't move - his arms and legs had energy-draining bracelets snapped around them, and his muscles failed to respond to his instructions.

"Take him to camp four," Cindy said. Cyber nodded and stomped towards the stairs.

Cindy regarded the hole in the wall - and ceiling - where the other three had escaped. She knew that the pursuers had failed, but that was of no concern to her. She had what she needed. The rest would follow in time.


	15. Chapter 15: Torture

_A/N: My playlist for writing this chapter was chapter is basically **The Logical Song, I'm Raving,** and **Nessaja (Mindcontrolaz Remix)**, all by Scooter._

* * *

"AAARRRGGGHHH!!!" 

The scream of pain echoed through the halls, but they reached deaf ears. The torturer drove the poker in further, and the molten tip seared into Flame's side. He was tied to the wall with solid iron bars, and all he could do was squrim.

The torturer held the bar there for a few more seconds, then withdrew it. Flame was breathing heavily through clenched teeth.

"Come now, Flame," Cindy said. She was the only other person in the room. "You can end this very quickly."

He glared at her, through eyes half-shut from the pain. "Never."

Cindy shrugged. "As you wish," she said, then she nodded at the torturer, who drove the poker back in to the same spot. Flame's tough skin was resisting penetration, but the pain was intense.

He screamed again.

* * *

"Flame..." Kaida whispered. She was crouched on the floor, eyes closed, as much in mourning as trying to locate him. But her efforts proved fruitless. He was either deeply unconscious, in intense pain, or purposefully blocking her out. Kaida had the feeling it was the second. 

She shook her head as she stood. "Nothing," she said. The others in the room sighed. It was a dejected moment - not only had they lost their leader - and in Kaida case, her closest friend - but they had also lost all means to contact Gennai with this news, as well as any other forces that might aid them.

They were completely on their own. Not even Jet could help - he knew nothing outside the current circumstances that could assist.

Kaida looked back at the bank of screens. It showed a trace program, desperately trying to pick up any of Flame's signals. So far, it had had no luck, and Kaida had little faith that it would find anything at all.

The door to the room slid open, and Jorcy entered. "Nothing," he said. He had tried asking local Digimon villagers in a 150 mile radius of Cindy's castle, if they had seen a blue Flamedramon. Most of the villagers were Northern Kingdom servants, but Jorcy looked like a neutral to them, and they told him all they knew - which amounted to nothing.

"So there's no way of telling where he is," Kaida said, looking back at the screens. "And there's no way of telling _how_ he is."

"Yeah," Jorcy said, letting his voice trail off, and the room fell silent again.

* * *

Flame had screamed until his voice was hoarse and his lungs were tired, but the torturer would not let up. After being burned in four key places with the poker, the torturer had switched to other methods. 

An electrical current was running through Flame's restraints - from his wrists through to his ankles. The torturer had a stout, black tube, which was basically an electromagnet. The currents flowing through Flame had a mildly numbing effect, until the torturer touched the tube to his body...

Flame's world exploded into pain again. The disrupted currents around his left knee were triggering every neuron in the area, and the pain was prodigious. He tried to scream again, but ended up coughing up small droplets of blood.

The torturer withdrew the tube, noting the small flecks of blood around Flame's lips. Then he reached over to a control panel and flicked a switch. The currents stopped flowing, and Flame's body slumped in the restraints. It was only a few seconds later that the pain from all the wounds returned, and he started writhing uncomfortably.

The torturer pulled out a cellphone.

"Yes ... He's showing signs of internal damage ... Understood."

He put the cellphone away, then reached for a prepared syringe on the table. Unceremoniously, he jabbed it into Flame's side, and depressed the plunger.

The clear solution flowed through Flame's veins, concentrating around the wounds, which were rapidly healed. The neural damage remained, however, and it did nothing to dull the pain. About thirty seconds later, his side was completely healed from the poker burns, and his lungs were restored to normal functioning. They still hurt like hell, though.

They could keep his body alive, and they could constantly increase the pain. Flame realized this all at once, and the knowledge filled him with almost as much horror as the next torture method.

The torturer was grinning as he held it up, and Flame looked away, eyes closed, awaiting the pain...

* * *

"What is that thing doing?" Edan asked, gesturing at the screens. Kaida looked from his claw to the monitors. 

"Pattern scans. They're trying to find any traces of Flame."

"This might not be the appropriate time," Edan began, "but I've always been curious as to how that worked."

Kaida considered his request. She knew the answers well enough, and she decided that it might be a good idea to answer anyway. Take her mind off things.

"Well, it all comes down to a few listening posts," she began. "There are two kinds. Earth-based, and Digital World based. The Digital World ones resemble little glass spheres, embedded at random points across a particular landscape. Each listening post gathers as much data about the world around it, and transmits it back to a central computer, where it's sifted for useful information."

"Okay," Edan nodded. "What about the Earth-based ones?"

"Well, they are basically computers plugged into the Internet. They monitor traffic across several routers, and transmit their findings back for analysis, just like the glass spheres."

"What's the range of one of these things?"

"Well, for the Digital World ones, it depends on the physical size. The bigger, the better. Most of our listening posts are the size of tennis balls, and have an effective range of 25 miles, diameter."

"Cool. And the Earth ones?"

"Considerably more. The range is dependent on the amount of connection points the computer has into the Digital World - and most computers are capable of thousands. Of the three we have, the smallest is 100 miles, and the largest 1500 miles."

"Impressive," Edan said.

Kaida nodded. "We have most of this continent covered," she said, pressing a few keys to bring up a world map. Edan got up off his chair and stood next to her.

"These are the Digital World listening posts," she said, waving her claw at the screen. About half the continent was covered with small green circles - several hundred of them.

"And here are the Earth-based ones," she said, punching a key.

Two listening posts were active. They covered most of the Southern Kingdom, and extended about a quarter way into the north.

"That's _really_ impressive," Edan said, but Kaida was shaking her head.

"No wonder," she whispered, then started typing furiously.

The map disappeared, and was replaced with a command prompt. Edan looked on as she typed at a hellish rate, growing more and more excited with each passing keystroke.

He didn't know what was going on, but he sensed it was going to be good.


	16. Chapter 16: Destination: Paris

_A/N: Playlist for this chapter contained Phenomenon, Move and Falls Apart by Thousand Foot Krutch, as well as Moby's Lift me up. Enjoy!_

* * *

The torturer casually tossed the depleted syringe on to his desk, then crossed his arms and waited for the computer to beep. Flame had just been injected with over 200ml of a specially-formulated serum. It was one of the torturer's favorites. Indefinitely reusable, unstoppable, and extremely effective at any pressure point on the body. 

The Flamedramon had clearly given up hope. He was staring at the wall across the room, his eyes dull and unfocused. He knew what was in that serum, and he knew what it could do. Now he was just waiting for the pain to start.

"Hey," the torturer said softly, and the Flamedramon focused on him.

"Just tell her what she wants to know," he said. "I know she'll let you go - despite her methods, she _is_ a woman of her word."

Flame regarded him for a few seconds, then shook his head.

"I will rather die than betray my friends, human."

Corporal James "Hammer" Harding regarded him for a few seconds, then shrugged. "Have it your way."

* * *

"Ok, Kaida, tell me what's got you so excited," Edan said, clearly lost. Kaida was looking at a massive screen filled with cryptic data readouts, and she was grinning hugely. 

"There," she said, pointing to a random point on the screen. Edan tried desperately to see, but nothing was forthcoming out of all the chaos.

"Kaida, you've seriously lost me."

"Look," she said, and the door slid open. Jet came walking in.

"Ah, there you are," he said to no one in particular. "Didn't find out anything from my undercover friends. And you guys?"

"Kaida's found something, but she won't tell me what it is," Edan said, seeming slightly hurt.

"Oh, whatever," Kaida said, brushing him off. "Jet, you might want to see this."

"For real?" Jet said, walking over to Kaida and standing next to her. "I don't see anything."

"There," she said, pointing at another random point on the screen. Jet strained, but he couldn't see anything out of the ordinary.

"Is this some sort of trick question?" Edan asked.

Kaida shook her head. "It might be our salvation," she said, beginning to type again.

"Sounds good," Jet said, folding his arms and waiting. "What's involved?"

"A French wine cellar and a master datacard."

Now she had lost them both.

* * *

Cindy walked into the room just as the laptop beeped, signalling that the device was ready. Corporal James looked over at her, and nodded to acknowledge her presence. 

"Has he said anything?" she asked, walking towards him.

"Nothing," he said. "I was about to start the next phase."

"Thank you, Corporal, but I'll take it from here."

James Harding bowed, cast one last look at the Flamedramon, and left the room. He was glad to hand this phase over to her.

Cindy regarded Flame, saying nothing until the door closed. Then she looked down at the laptop. On the screen was a three-dimensional model of Flame's body, viewing from the front. His entire body was filled with a bluish, granular glow. On the left side of the screen was a simple sliding scale, at 50.

She looked back up at Flame. "You know what the torturer's put in your system, don't you?"

Flame said nothing.

"Nanobots," Cindy said. "Several billion nanobots. You know what nanobots are, don't you?"

Flame lifted his head and looked at her, but still said nothing.

"Those nanobots have spread out across your entire system, and have latched on to your nerve fibres at every level. On the screen next to me," she said, gesturing to the laptop, "I have the interface for those nanobots."

"Just get it on with," Flame rasped. Cindy laughed and shook her head.

"Not yet, Flamedramon. I'm still getting to the good part."

Flame slumped again.

"Each of these nanobots is designed to absorb your neural energy, to concentrate it, and then to administer it back to you at whatever voltage and amperage I choose here. Even better, I can localise an area - say, a wound - and increase the pain in that area tremendously."

Flame was starting to lift his head again. Cindy looked at the screen, then placed her finger on the slider, dragging it down to 2. Then she looked back at Flame, who was staring at her, determination in his eyes.

"I can go from this," she said, stroking Flame's foot on the diagram. He felt a sharp tingle rush through his left foot. Not painful yet, but...

"... to this," she said, dragging the slider up to 30.

The tingle erupted into a pulsating, searing sensation. It felt as if Flame's foot was being burned off in molten steel - but there was no relief caused by a disappearing appendage.

Flame knew how low the power was set, and he knew how far it could go. He knew that it would never run out of power as long as he was alive, and it would never kill him because it never caused bodily damage.

Above all of that, he knew that his fate lay in the gentle brush stroked applied to the LCD surface of the laptop - and he knew the hand that would be administering his torture from here, until he cracked.

He screamed at the top of his lungs.

* * *

"Alright, Kaida, please start explaining yourself." Edan said. 

"Okay, okay. Look, I said we had three Earth-based listening stations. The largest of those has a range of 1500 miles, but I just found out that it's offline."

"How does that help?" Jet asked.

She waved him down. "The station covers the entire continent - north and south. It was one of Gennai's primary stations, before Invisible decided to run amok and wipe out the rest."

Jet shook his head. "Not following," he cautioned.

"That station has the power to look anywhere, at any time, and at any level of detail. It's like having a camera at every point on the continent - along with sound, data and EMF inputs. It's the ultimate - and if Flame's still anywhere on the continent, we'll be able to find him in no time. But unfortunately, it's been disabled."

"But," Edan asked, "How does that help?" beginning to connect the dots - and sensing Kaida's rising hope.

"The station is a mainframe-class computer sitting on a highspeed Internet line - in central France. Paris, to be exact. And Gennai left the master activation key - a card - in the Chelone base, should we ever need it."

"And..." Edan said, his words trailing off as he looked at Kaida.

She turned and smiled at him.

"We can turn it back on."

* * *

Flame slumped again. Cindy had stopped the flow of pain to his foot. Now she was waving her hand across the display, selecting other points on his body. 

"Flame," she said. "I'm going to ask you three more times."

"Hnnh..." Flame said.

"Where is Chelone's anchor?"

"No," Flame said.

"Where is Chelone's anchor?" she asked again, hand poised over the screen.

"Never," Flame whispered.

"Flame. Last chance before I burn the answer out of you. If you want to be any good to your friends, you'd better answer now."

Flame looked up one last time, staring her right in the eyes.

"Where ... is ... Chelone's ... anchor?" she asked slowly, staring right back at him.

"_Fuck you,_" he whispered.

Cindy grinned.

"Just the answer I was hoping to hear," she said, and jabbed the LCD display.

* * *

"Here it is," Kaida said, handing Edan a small, flat, black object. He looked at it, then pocketed it. He was in his human form right now, about to sneak into one of the busiest cities in the world. To turn on a dormant mainframe and reconnect it. 

Thereby ensuring their chances of finding Flame - and to him, that was worth any risk.

"Right," he said, then checked his other pouches. He was dressed in a black overall-like outfit, with a utility belt around his waist. The material was a type of basic Kevlar armor - it would greatly reduce damage from bullets. The pouches contained numerous things - a multitool Swiss army knife, several small bundles of cables, the data card, a few clips of .45 ACP ammunition, a scabbarded hunting knife, and a very unique cellphone.

Finally, in a hip holster, was the partner to the ammunition - a silenced .45 caliber Heckler Koch tactical pistol.

"All set," he said, hopping slightly to check that all the pouches were closed, and that everything was cinched tightly to his body. Stealth would be of the essence here.

"Okay," Kaida said. "I've opened a link to Paris in that chamber," she said, pointing at a nearby door. "You'll arrive in our Paris station, and I'll be in touch via your datalink."

Edan nodded. It had been a long time since he had done this, but he felt confident that he would pull it off. And this time, he realised, he had a little magic to aid him...

He grinned, then turned to Kaida.

"Let's get this party started," he said, then turned and walked off towards the teleportation chamber. Kaida watched him go, then left for the control room.


	17. Chapter 17: Splinter

_A/N: Here is the totality of the notes I had to work from: "17- Flame remembers past". I literally had to wing the whole chapter. Not bad for a dragon ;)_

_Music: Sad Statue by __System of a Down, as well as Phenomenon, Falls Apart and Move by __Thousand Foot Krutch._

* * *

The pain was tearing at his mental walls. His entire body was on fire, and it only got stronger with every passing second. Screaming to make it stop would not work. And Flame would not give up Chelone's anchors. Not to her. 

The nanobots cut out abruptly. This had become Cindy's latest favorite tactic. Blast him with pain, then suddenly cut it off, and then burst again.

"Flame," she said, with a chuckle in her voice. "You're really tough, you know?"

"..."

"It's just a pity that I'm only at 60," she said, turning the nanobots back on.

* * *

It took another half an hour of torture until Flame finally snapped. In the middle of an intensive blast session, he suddenly stopped screaming - and started crying. It was only a few tears at first, but it soon built into an unstoppable flow of sobs. 

Everything in him had been violated. Every inner wall, every sanctum, every secret had been raped by the incessant and excruciating power of the nanobots.. There was nothing left ... nothing but a burnt soul.

Flame didn't even notice the nanobots switching off. He failed to see Cindy walking up to him, wiping some tears away as she smiled. He didn't feel it, when the braces disengaged, and he fell to the floor.

He didn't hear Cindy walking out. In his stupor, he didn't feel the cold stone floor. Instead, he curled up into the foetal position, moaning softly to himself through the sobbing...

* * *

_It was a bright, sunny day. The birds overhead, riding the fresh winds of the dawn, sang a promise of a great day. But the rising smoke - and the screams - quickly shattered that dream._

_It could have been any mountain village. It could have been any mountain, in fact, but the forces of darkness had chosen this village on this mountain. Despite the seemingly invincible blue skies, hordes of enemy forces had stormed this village, ripping it apart._

_Houses were burning. Dead Digimon littered the streets, their blood flowing in little rivulets that eventually coalesced into rivers, streaked down the gutters, mingled with the dirty water, and washed down to the local river, where it would be swallowed up by the clear blue water of the main stream._

_But there would be no such ease of purification for one small Veemon. His body was smeared with the blood of two Digimon that had been very close to him. And he was close to them now, even in death, as he huddled over the bodies of his dead parents, fervently wishing either that they would wake up - or that he would wake up. Either way, that there would be an end to this nightmare._

_His cries for help had diminished into the little sobs of a lost and hurt child. And his sobs were no different from the hundreds of others in the village, as terrified children emerged from their hiding places, trying to find whatever was left._

_But there was nothing. Nothing except the dead bodies of their parents and older friends, and the acrid stench of burning houses. Lost and confused, little Digimon staggered around, trying to find their way._

_The Veemon looked up from where he had been resting his head - his father's bloody chest. His heart had been ripped out by a much bigger, clawed Digimon assailant, and the blood had caked into the gap, filling the hole._

_The little Veemon stood, shaking as he tried to find his balance. He was confused, he was lost, and he was alone. He had no idea what to do, no idea where to go, no idea who to call upon..._

_Slowly, he turned, and started walking. Down the street, to the main road, and eventually out of town. He was in a daze - his legs were moving on automatic, and his eyes were set on the horizon ahead. Step by step, he moved further and further away from the catastrophe._

_Passing Digimon stopped and stared at his bloody and bruised figure, but none stopped to help. What had happened to him was none of their concern, and they were not going to get involved._

_Veemon never stopped walking. But his walking would never carry him far enough._

* * *

Flame - once a proud warrior, defender of a realm, mentor, teacher and friend, assistant to the greatest general of all time - cowered and whimpered as his past was played back to him. In the shattered recesses of his mind, nothing was real - yet everything was as real as the day it happened. 

He didn't hear the door open, and he didn't acknowledge Cindy as she crouched next to him. He was lost in a world of his own, plagued by memories that, until this point, had been hidden from him...

* * *

_The Veemon had somehow managed to reach another village. This one was almost two full days away, but the little Digimon wasn't tired yet. Whatever he was fueled by, it wasn't going to run out soon._

_Digimon stopped and stared as he walked down the main street, oblivious to the world around him. It didn't occur to any of them to find out if he was okay, and as he passed out of immediate earshot, they went back to whatever they were doing._

_The Veemon took a left turn - as if on instinct - and started walking down a slightly narrower road. There was a tavern on the right, and by the sounds of shouting and breaking glass, there was a fight in progress._

_As he came within fifty feet of the door, it burst open, and several enraged Digimon stormed out. They were flinging furniture and other large items at eachother. One of them - a burly Greymon - grabbed a massive table from inside the tavern, and stormed out onto the street._

_His target was a WarGreymon, and he lifted the table over his head, roaring as he brought it down on the WarGreymon at full force._

_Unfortunately for the drunken and enraged dinosaur, he missed the WarGreymon entirely - and smashed a passerby Veemon over the head with enough force to split his skull._

_The Veemon was instantly crushed - and killed. His mangled body was pressed into the road surface by the power of the blow, and like a burst balloon, his blood had spread out almost twenty feet in every direction._

_The Greymon pulled up the table, and swung it at another Digimon, not even pausing to look at the carnage he had caused._

* * *

Flame whimpered at the memory of the table coming down on him. He had blanked out then, but he was seeing it all now, as if from an overhead camera. When the table was lifted, and he saw what was left of himself, he cried again, renewed sobs wracking his body. 

He didn't feel the needle piercing his arm, but the new serum would have it's effect nonetheless.

* * *

_The fight was still going on, and the dust they were kicking up had formed a haze around the area. Massive, struggling Digmon moved to and fro over the road surface as they continued engaging in their pointless fight._

_The bloody corpse of the Veemon had since been covered in a layer of dust, and was no longer clearly visible._

_Slowly, mysteriously, the Veemon's spilled blood began to glow. Even the flecks on the walls of the tavern started to shine with an inner light._

_The blood vanished, replaced by little puddles and streaks of light. The bodily remnants of the slain Digimon were also absorbed by the light, until, eventually, there was nothing left of him._

_The lights started to gravitate towards the sky, forming into a ball as they went. As it cleared the roof of the tavern, the lights coalesced into a single, tight, sphere, and shot off into the blue yonder._

_A black shroud overtook the day's light_, as Flame felt himself being dragged down into a warm, inviting, aura of sleep...

* * *

Cindy was satisfied. The Flamedramon had cracked. When he awoke, the last of his inhibitions would have been erased, and he would tell them all they wanted to know. 

She nodded to the two guard Digimon standing nearby, who moved in and lifted him up. His unconscious form was to be moved to a new place, where she would have much easier access to him once he awoke.

Gently, he was laid on a stretcher, and strapped into place. The two guards carried him out, and Cindy followed. There was much more work to do, but she felt happier about all of it, having achieved something so monumental.

It could even be said that there was a slight spring in her step.

* * *


	18. Chapter 18: Paris Revisited

"I'm in," Edan said, then stood up from his crouch. It was a freezing Paris night, it was overcast, and there was a hint of rain in the air. Even in his human form, his Digimon-enhanced senses remained. He could also sense trouble near the target wine cellar.

"_Okay,_" Kaida said. "_It looks like there's some police activity - right at your target._"

"Acknowledged."

Edan tensed his legs, positioned himself, then leaped into the air. Black on black was perfect camouflage, and no one saw the incredible jump. As he sailed past the edge of the roof, he grabbed it with one hand, and swung himself over the edge, landing in a squat.

"Compass, direction." A massive, green compass appeared in the air before him. It was pointing to the left. He turned, and the compass kept righting itself, until he was looking at a spot halfway across Paris.

_At least that's away from the Eiffel Tower,_ he thought. The iconic blaze of light would do him no good. Instead, the target was in the direction of one of the Parisian slums.

He started running, reached the end of the roof, and leaped over to the next. He had a lot of ground to cover.

* * *

Kaida watched him leap from rooftop to rooftop via a satellite feed. There was nothing unbecoming in his immediate path, so she shifted the view to the wine cellar.

There was some serious activity in the restaurant across the road. It was most likely a robbery gone bad. She didn't care. What she was concerned about was the activity level around the cellar.

She caught herself. Edan was more than capable. She didn't quite know how he could do what he could do. Her working assumption was that it had something to do with his genetic makeup – and maybe his training. Prior to his really bad encounter at the wrong end of a minigun, not too much was known about him.

* * *

Edan landed on the rooftop of the cellar he was meant to infiltrate. Police were buzzing in the streets below. Several ambulances had pulled up, casualities were being loaded, and a few reporters were on the scene. 

He would never get in unnoticed like this. He scanned the immediate environment for anything that could help. The road terminated in a T-junction on his right. The building at the junction had an elevated water tower sprouting from the top.

He looked at it – it was supported by a very thin tracery of metal beams. Post-World War II stuff, when they didn't have that many materials to work with.

He unholstered his pistol, and removed the clip. Then he pulled another one from his utility belt. All the bullets had red tips- they were packed with high explosive.

Edan carefully slotted the clip into the base of the gun, and cocked it. Then he looked down. They were finishing up with the ambulances, and the drivers were making their way to their seats.

He looked back at the water tower, did a few quick estimations, and raised his pistol. It would have to be quick.

The wail of the ambulance sirens started up. Edan didn't have to look down to know they were moving – he could tell by the way the sound changed. He waited for three more seconds, then pulled the trigger four times in quick succession.

The supports facing the street were the first to go, as the connections with the tower were blown away by the explosive bullets. Then, they were disconnected from the roof below. Slowly, in an almost dream-like fashion, the water tower dislodged and tumbled to the ground.

It smashed the first ambulance on impact, squelching the wail of its siren instantly. Then the tank exploded, sending thousands of gallons of water cascading down the street. The wave broke windows, bent street lamps, and carried several police cars along.

The panic was instant. Edan lowered his gun, and fired again. The bullet detonated inside a power relay box, and all the lights in the area blew immediately.

Without pause, he hopped off the edge of the roof, holstering his pistol on the way down. He landed with a splash, but in the panicked darkness, no one noticed. There was not enough light to see by, but as a Digimon, Edan could see just fine.

He swung around, searching for the door to the cellar. It was three feet to his left. He tried opening it, but it was locked. A quick foray into his utility belt produced am electronic lockpick.

He slid it in, and the lockpick got to work. Three seconds later, the latch clicked, and the door opened easily. He slipped inside, closed it behind him, and then leaned on it, catching his breath.

Edan hit the "TX" switch on his headset.

"Kaida, I'm in."

* * *

"And at the cost of half the local police force, I might add," Kaida said, but she wasn't angry. 

"_Sucks for them," _Edan replied.

* * *

Edan whipped out a flashlight, and surveyed the area. It was a tunnel, leading straight on, and terminating in a door. As there was no other option in sight, he walked toward it, all his senses on high alert. 

The dark, resonant tunnel was reminiscent of the volcano he had found himself trapped in, but he was able to shun the memory immediately. He had a job to do.

This door opened easily, and he was standing in a wine cellar. Racks of barrels lined the walls of the square room, there was a table in the middle, and not much else. Surprisingly, the cellar was illuminated by a weak, yellowish ceiling-mounted bulb.

"Well, here I am," Edan said, returning his flashlight to its pouch. "Now what?"

"_Gennai hid a mainframe in that room. Find it?"_

"Kaida, there's nothing here."

"_Try searching, Edan_."

"Sure," Edan said, at a loss for a better option.

He set about tapping the barrels, trying to hear if one of them, perhaps, contained something other than wine – or empty air. A few minutes later, he hit gold. Or solid material, at least.

Edan grabbed the barrel, and pulled. It was _heavy._Straining, he swung the barrel to the table. It landed with a loud _thud_.

Edan inspected the barrel from all angles. On the rear face of the barrel, the wood had been replaced with a clear layer of ... something else. He touched it, and it lit up.

The barrel started to hum, grumble and hiss, as the top popped off and swung open. Inside was an LCD screen and a keyboard. On the screen were the words "_Supply Access Card_".

"Kaida, I think I've found it," Edan said, opening the pouch with the card.

"_Excellent!"_she said, clearly excited._ "There should be a clearly visible slot for the card."._

There was. A vertical slot, next to the Enter key. Edan looked at the card from all angles, trying to figure out if there was a particular direction it had to be inserted in. All the surfaces were just as featureless, so he gave up and just stuck the card in.

The machine drew it in like an ATM card. With rising anticipation, Edan watched the screen change.

"_Scanning..."_

"_Verifying..."_

"_Card invalid. Please supply correct data card."_

The card popped back out. Edan didn't know what to think. He removed it, looked at it, then turned it around, inserting it reverse end first.

"_Scanning ... Verifying ... Card invalid"_

"Kaida, I think I'm doing this wrong," he said, removing the card and looking at it again.

"_What do you mean?_"

"The machine's rejecting the card. It's asking me for a valid card."

"_Impossible – that's the right card, and that's the only mainframe in the area. Try it again!_"

Edan shrugged, flipped the card over, and tried again. He got the same result, but this time, there was a warning:

"_Card invalid. Please supply correct data card. Two attempts remaining."_

"Kaida, it's telling me I only have two tries left._"_

Kaida sighed, clearly frustrated. "_Okay. Let's try and figure this out. Is there anything else on the machine that can help us?_"

Edan carefully inspected the machine. Apart from the screen, keyboard and card slot, there was nothing. He relayed this back to Kaida, who was clearly disappointed.

"_It makes no sense_," she said, dejected. "_Gennai doesn't make mistakes like this_."

"Maybe he had no choice?" Edan asked.

"What do you mean?"

"When Flame got back from Paris with Gennai, he mentioned something about an 'emergency protocol'".

"_So? What would that have to do ... oh, wait. WAIT – you said _Paris_?!"_

"Yeah – the French one."

"_Damn, okay. This changes things._"

"How so?"

"Emergency protocol. The mainframe's been moved," Kaida said. Edan could hear her computers spinning into action.

"Moved? How can it have moved?"

"_The card you're holding contains an activation key for the monitoring software. Since the machine is rejecting the key, it no longer holds that software._"

"Okay ... so where did it move to?"

"_Knowing Gennai? Somewhere very unexpected._"

"Heh."

As she continued to work, Edan looked around the cellar. It was a very interesting place to hide a mainframe. Inside a barrel, in a cellar like this, which probably hadn't been disturbed for decades.

So Gennai would have moved the mainframe to a very different location. A location that one wouldn't expect to have to travel to, in order to activate the mainframe. Somewhere busy, high-profile, lots of people. There were many places like that, though...

"_Shit_," Kaida said, interrupting his thoughts.

"Did you find it?"

"_I did._"

"And?"

"_Heh. Remember how Gennai used to have that fervent attitude towards unifying Earth and the Digital World?_"

"Yeah – with the gates, and new passports, delegations, stuff like that?"

"_Same one. So take a wild guess where he moved the mainframe?_"

Edan thought about it for a few seconds, and then the penny dropped.

"Holy shit."

"_Exactly. Get out of there. You're going to New York_."


	19. Chapter 19: Submission

Cindy was pacing. Up and down, fidgeting with a cellphone. Damian wondered what had her in a knot like that. As far as he knew, everything was going according to plan. Maybe there was something a little more critical...

Her phone rang. She flipped it open and answered it in time to clip it's first ring.

"Yes? ... Oh, thank God. Yes, gate twelve. ... I'll be there right away." She hung up.

"They're finally here! Damian, get that earth link ready."

"Sure thing."

"It's about time we got this ball rolling," she said, walking out of the control room. Damian couldn't help but grin. 

* * *

Gate Twelve was a border link between Earth and the Digital World. The Earth-side gate was located in Nevada, and the Digital World-side on the northern end of the Continent, not too far from Cindy's castle.

The gate was located at the bottom of a valley, which rolled into a massive, flat plateau. That plateau would serve as their operational base. The gate – a massive ring carved out of the mountain face - was active. And thousands of troops were pouring through. She watched as another tank made the entrance, flashing into existence and rolling down the ramp, joining the procession that was already making it's way down the valley, and out onto the plateau.

From where she was standing, she could see everything. Soldiers and their commanding officers were scurrying around, marking lines, erecting tents and control modules, automated defenses and sentry devices.

A very large army had just started assembling itself. She rubbed her hands together in excitement. This operation had been a long time coming. The commander – General Ryan Hawkins – was still on the other side. As soon as he arrived, they would start discussing the attack strategies.

She turned to go. Her latest prisoner was due to awaken soon. And it was time to start prying information from him.

* * *

"_Flame..._"

The voice echoed from the infinite darkness surrounding the trapped Digimon. Flame was unconscious, but a part of his mind was active – and lost in a void. He was entirely disconnected from the world around him. He could feel no pain, no anger, no shame.

"_Flame..._"

"Yes?" He called back into the darkness. Suddenly, it wasn't dark anymore. An explosion of light transformed the darkness, revealing a valley so brightly lit that Flame's eyes hurt for a few moments.

He forced them closed, then opened them again. There were mountains and an ocean in the distance. Clouds were scattered across an azure sky. In the distance, he could hear the soft sigh of the shore, he could feel a gentle breeze across his body. On the edge of his hearing, there were little birds, happily singing and dancing across the sky.

"Flame," came the voice again, and Flame turned to see Gennai standing there. It was a much younger version, though – Flame estimated him to be about twenty-six. Externally, he looked unremarkable – middle height, average build, short, faded brown hair, brown eyes, dressed in black leather and denims - but Flame knew him better than that.

"What is this place?" Flame asked.

Gennai motioned to the air next to him. "This place? Nothing and nowhere. It's a state of mind – a happy, relaxed state of mind."

"Why am I here?"

Gennai sighed. "Something I locked within you. I had hoped I would have time to reveal it myself, but it seems that ... other forces have achieved that instead."

In an instant, it all came flooding back. The nanobots. Searing pain. Anger, denial – hatred – flowing into a pocket of memory that had burst. A young Veemon, brutally murdered. By accident. White glows, disappearing into the sky.

Flame opened his eyes again – and they were filled with the same anger. Before Gennai could so much as blink, Flame had charged forward, grabbing him around the neck and slamming him into a tree at maximum force.

Had he been human, his neck would have snapped, and his head would have been embedded in the tree. As it was, he lived.

"_Why didn't you tell me_?!" Flame screamed. Gennai's eyes betrayed nothing.

"To protect you."

"_FROM WHO?"_

"Yourself." Gennai replied, impassive. Flame regarded him for a few moments, then withdrew his claw. Gennai hit the ground but stayed standing. Flame backed off, regaining control.

"What do you mean, from myself?"

"After your abrupt death, you were recovered and reconfigured. Fixed, as such. There was a small chance that you would remember the event – and the death of your parents. To prevent potential emotional breakdown, I isolated and hid all those memories. It was necessary for you to start over, with a clean slate."

"A clean slate. Is that what you call it?"

Gennai shrugged. "Would you rather have wanted to deal with that pain at that young age?"

"Yes," Flame said, then shook his head. "No ... I ... I don't know." He turned away, burying his face in his hands.

"I was planning to unblock those memories, but events turned for the worse, and it would have been better to reveal them in an unpressured environment. I'm terribly sorry." Gennai said, but Flame could sense he was hiding something. Whatever it was, this was not the time.

"Sorry doesn't cut it," Flame mumbled from behind his hands.

"For better or worse, that block has been removed. What happens from here on out is your choice."

Flame said nothing. Gennai stepped to the side, and started walking backwards.

"Remember, Flame – it's your choice. They're depending on you to choose wisely."

"They?" Flame asked looking up. But Gennai was already gone. So was the light, the warmth, and the entire valley. All that remained of the vision was a pair of eyes – cold and brutal. And a voice that he had come to loathe and fear.

"Yes, they. Your friends." Cindy said. 

* * *

Flame had been chained back to the wall. The nanobots in his system had been deactivated after he fell asleep, but they responded to his rising energy levels, and activated themselves. Flame could feel their minute buzzing throughout his body.

He knew what it meant. Most of his power was back. But he also knew that he had a choice to make. He could resist interrogation again. It would be a shorter resistance, but the anchor would remain hidden – for at least a while longer.

Or he could tell Cindy, and then hope that Jet, Jorcy and the others stopped her. This would mean less torture, and more strength for whichever battles lay ahead.

Two options. Before he could think any further, Cindy walked back into the room, accompanied by a man Flame hadn't seen before. An older man, but age didn't get to him. His hair was close-cropped and silver, and his ice-blue eyes betrayed an enormous intelligence.

"General Ryan Hawkins," Cindy said, "Meet Flamedramon."

"Ah, yes, Flamedramon," Hawkins said, nodding approvingly. Flame noticed that his voice didn't sound very old – but it did carry an air of authority with it.

"I would say I'm pleased to meet you," Flame said, "But I'm not sure that would be entirely honest."

Hawkins laughed. "A Digimon with a sense of humor! This will be fun indeed. Now, you know why we're here?"

"Not at all."

"I'm surprised she didn't tell you. Well, no matter. You're not meant to know anyway. All you need to know is that we want access to Chelone. Chelone does sound familiar, right?"

"Hardly," Flame said.

Hawkins shrugged. "That's none of my concern. I was told that you knew the location of the anchor on this continent, that connects Chelone to the Digital World. To put it simply, Flamedramon, we need to know where it is."

"A what?"

"An anchor, Flamedramon." Hawkins said. "Not unlike that of a ship, except that the chain is a high-density data stream. Surely you know of at least one?"

Flame could sense Hawkins' humor fading. It was now or never. He wondered if he was making the right choice. He took a deep breath, expelled it, and said -

"Yes. I know of one."

Hawkins grinned. "Excellent!" 

* * *

_Footer note thingies: OMG, yes, I updated. There's a thread on the DZN forum for this story, entitled "The ARCANE Deception", if you have anything you'd like to ask ;) _


	20. Chapter 20: Moriseriko

"_Edan's on his way to New York. The server we're looking for is in the U.N. building. He can handle it on his own. I need you and Jet to scout the front line. Chances are, Flame's been moved. Maybe someone knows something._"

"Right," Jorcy said, seemingly to the empty air in front of him.

"_If you find anything, let me know immediately._"

"Will do," he said, then closed his fist, cutting off the communication link. Jet was standing nearby, scanning the horizon with a set of enhanced binoculars. They were standing on top of a mountain, with a clear view of the massive, rolling valley that contained the invisible Kingdom-dividing line.

After the Northern Army's advance, most of it was in ruins. They had pushed their front line almost clear across the valley, and they had shattered most of the South's defences. At the present moment, they were fortifying their positions – and soon, they would advance again, steadily progressing towards

"No luck on that server yet?" he asked, keeping his focus on the horizon.

"It's in New York. Edan's taking care of it. Kaida wants us to scout the front line, see if we find anything."

"Hmm..."

"You don't suppose Flame's been kept in that castle all this time?"

"I doubt that," Jet said, lowering his binoculars. "Too easy a target."

"Yeah, guess you're right. So where do we start?"

"If he's been moved, he would have been moved to a more secure area." He motioned to the new Northern front line.

"The Southern Army is basing itself in Ankarrah for now – that's only a few miles from here. I'd bet my bottom dollar that they'll try a concentrated counteroffensive. If they can punch through the North's defensive line, they can probably cause enough damage to stall the next wave. Enough time to prepare a better defence."

"So they obviously won't be keeping Flame anywhere near here. But why not the castle? It's basically the furthest point North possible. It's even further north than the Capital."

"Because further isn't safer. It's very far off to the west – and weak against a tactical strike. How do you think we got you out?" he asked with a grin.

"I thought you knocked and asked nicely."

"And that's why I don't pay you to think."

"You don't pay me at all!"

"Exactly," Jet said with a wink. 

* * *

"Any luck?"

"_What – you mean, have I successfully breached one of the most secure buildings this side of the Greenwich Meridian? I'm working on it._"

"Just don't blow anything up, Edan."

"_I'll try my damndest best, promise._" 

* * *

"So do you have any suggestions?" Jorcy asked, getting impatient.

"Apart from getting caught, yes. How's about we infiltrate the Northern capital?"

"Just walk in to 'Seriko?"

Jet shrugged. "Why not? If you can drop that whiteness of yours, we should be able to get in unnoticed."

"You just hate me cause I'm black," Jorcy taunted, as he set to work lowering his HEAV readiness.

"Blue works too," Jet said, stooping to collect his rifle. A beast of a weapon, modified to fire 0.776-caliber anti-armored-vehicle bullets. It was the kind of gun you _didn't_ want to hear the bearer of say "Oops".

"I'll stash this in a nearby forest or something," he said, straightening up and looking at Jorcy.

Jorcy had returned to an almost-perfect Flamedramon blue. The dark grey tribal patterns weren't very noticeable, and the visor could be accounted for with some explanation.

They would be fine. Jet hopped off the plateau, and started making his way down the mountain. Jorcy soon followed, and Cyber wasn't far behind, either. 

* * *

The truck had been moving over rough ground for a while now, and the constant shaking and banging dragged Flame out of his drug-induced sleep for a few seconds.

He was tied to a stretcher. All he could see was the tarpaulin ceiling of the truck. It looked a lot like a human military transport – and it would fit, given that he was just interrogated by humans.

The interrogation. In desperation, he had played his only valid card – and the humans had bought into it. It was done. Now, he only hoped it wouldn't bring this war to a disastrous end. 

* * *

"It's in Moriseriko!"

Damian looked up from his work. Cindy strode into the room, accompanied by General Hawkins. She looked very happy – things were obviously going well.

"You mean the anchor, right?" Damian asked. She nodded.

"What a cheek Carver has. Placing an anchor right under our noses."

"The last place we'd have looked," Hawkins agreed.

"Damian," Cindy said. "The Moriseriko anchor is dormant, but an anchor's an anchor, so you should be able to find it. I would prefer it if you did."

"I'll get right on it. Shouldn't take too long, since I have Chelone's digital wave signature."

"Excellent. Hawkins, how are things on your front?"

"Most of my troops are through. I'm busy assembling a special ops squad to take over Chelone. It will all be ready by the time we have the location of the anchor."

"Okay. I think it would be better if you return to your troops. We'll pack up the operation here and join you on the plateau by the end of the day."

"Very well."

"Flame would have arrived by the time you get there," Cindy said. "Place him under light guard, somewhere near the outskirts of the camp."

"Are you sure that's wise?" Hawkins asked.

Cindy nodded. "We have what we need, so he's of no further use to us. His friends might try and rescue him again, and if he's located too deep in the camp, we could sustain too much damage."

"So we're basically handing him back?"

"Something like that. By the time the effects of the drugs and the nanobots wear off, we will have Chelone – and EVA – in our possession. He won't be an asset to his friends in any way."

"I see what you mean," Hawkins said. "I'll make sure it gets done."

"Groovy.", Cindy said with a smile. 

* * *

"It's bigger than I expected," Jorcy said, staring up at the city skyline.

"No shit. It's a continental capital."

Moriseriko was huge. It served as the hub for trade activities across three continents. The Moriseriko dock was always busy, and held a reputation as the biggest, dirtiest, and most dangerous place to work.

Away from the docks, on almost the other side of the city, was the commerce center. A small cluster of skyscrapers that mainly held the administration functions of the larger trade organisations. And between them – and spead all around – a mass of streets, buildings, noise, lights, smells, confusion and bustling activity.

Most of the city was surrounded by a hundred-metre high wall – thirty meters thick – that used to be the primary defensive layer when Moriseriko was still an army fortress. It had only been broken through in two places – a main entrance, and a smaller exit that led to the mountains.

Jet and Jorcy were standing at the smaller entrance. A massive arch over a wide and busy road, clogged with carts, pedestrians, and a lot of shouting.

"What a place to hide an anchor," Jorcy said. Jet nodded.

"Come on – let's go. If there's anything out of place here, we should be able to spot it."

Jorcy nodded. As they walked off, making their way to the road, Cyber peeked out from behind a nearby tree. In the fading light, he was forced to squint to see them clearly.

He had learned that the anchor they were looking for was in Moriseriko. If they had come to secure it, it could prove problematic. He knew that the strike team was due to arrive in the early dawn hours.

Cyber decided to tail them, and report any suspicious activity. Springing the trap now wouldn't be a wise move, and they had plenty to accomplish before the next day was through. 

* * *

_**Footer note thingamajig.** I was planning on having a whole scene where Edan successfully infiltrates the UN, but I ditched it, choosing to give some more focus to Jet and Jorcy. It's part of a very tricky shift in the story, because I have no fcking clue what I'm doing._

_Most authors have at least SOME idea where they're going. Not me. The next few chapters are going to be incredibly difficult to pull off, because I have to take so many factors into account, and warp them all into a very specific ending. I honestly don't see how I'm going to make it happen. And I don't think I can use surprise attacks again... _

_Anyhoo. On to teh futurez. _


	21. Chapter 21: Trent

They had to dodge, weave, step sideways, and attempt to flow with thousands of other Digimon down the central roads of the capital. Jorcy was finding it decidedly difficult to breathe, and not just because of the confusing plethora of unidentifiable odours. He wondered why the hell he didn't stop Jet from yet another crazy idea.

Out of nowhere, a claw grabbed him on the shoulder. He turned to face his assailant, fully ready to take him down. It was only Jet, however - somehow he had fallen behind. He pulled Jorcy out of the main pedestrian flow, straight through a wooden door, and into what appeared - initially, anyway - to look like a tavern.

The outside noise reduced to a low hum when Jet shut the door again. Various patrons, hunched over their drinks, didn't even bother looking up. The lighting from the ceiling was set very low, and it took Jorcy a few seconds to adjust from the bright lights outside.

Jet pulled him towards the counter, practically dumping him in a chair before he sat down himself. The bartender - a few feet away, scribbling on a notepad - looked up as they sat, then folded the notepad closed and walked over.

"So, can I get you gentlemon anything?"

Jorcy didn't know which he found more surprising. The fact that an inner-city bartender spoke perfectly trimmed English - or the fact that the inner-city bartender was a human being. While his brain slowly disengaged from his jaw, Jet ordered two beers. The bartender was quick, and Jorcy had a cold pint in his hand before he was able to say anything.

The bartender noticed his completely lost look, and grinned apologetically. "Weren't expecting a human here, were you?" Jorcy could only shake his head. The bartender chuckled and shrugged.

"Well, here I am. Name's Trent. And you are?"

"Jorcy ... " Jorcy begain. Trent nodded, then turned to Jet.

"And you must be the infamous Jet Black?"

Jet made a strange noise - half-sigh, half-growl. "What gave it away?"

Trent shrugged again. "I'm just good at reading things."

"Uh, Trent..." Jorcy began, but Trent had already anticipated his question.

"Why am I here?" He asked. Jorcy nodded. Trent thought for a few seconds, then started.

"Moriseriko has been in contact with humans for a long time now. I actually run this place along with my Digimon partner. I suppose you could say we're in retirement of sorts, though my Digimon partner often accepts freelance work, and is out of the city most of the time."

"How long have you been here?"

"About a year now. Jasper - that's my partner - and I met out in a prospecting field up north, quite some time ago. He inherited this place from his uncle, and decided to keep it running rather than sell out. It took a little while for our usual clientele to get used to the fact that there was a human here, but we don't advertise the fact, and everything kept spinning. Another one?" Trent asked, nodding at Jet, who had already finished his beer. Jet nodded, and Trent set about getting him a new beer.

Jorcy tried to take a sip, but it was already warm from his holding it. He put it down and forgot about it, choosing instead to look around the place. It was the sort of tavern he would have expected to find in some remote village somewhere. Wooden floor and ceiling, stone walls, massive wooden tables and benches, candles and lanterns, and foggy old windows. The place smelled mostly of beer, a few stronger alcohols, wood, and that same confusing, mildly nauseating mix from the street outside.

"Anything interesting happen lately?" Jet asked as he started on his second beer. Trent shrugged at the question. Jorcy noticed he did that a lot, and started wondering about him.

"Depends on what you call interesting. There's a lot of Digimon leaving the continent because of the war, and there's some increased military activity to the north west, but that's really about it."

Jet grunted and continued working at his beer. Jorcy was still analysing Trent. He was about six foot two, a little heavier than skinny, looked very fit, sported close-cropped hair, obviously of English descent, and was wearing totally black clothes. Nothing overly suspicious.

Trent grinned at him. "That's a hard stare you're giving me, Jorcy."

Jorcy looked away, pretending not to hear. Trent walked off, going back to his notepad. Jorcy gave him a look out of the corner of his eye, then returned his attention to the discarded beer in front of him.

"You're not drinking," Jet said. It was more of a statement than an observation.

"Not thirsty."

Jet grabbed the beer out from under Jorcy at lightning speed. Jorcy let it go. His thoughts drifted to Edan and Kaida, and wondered how much success they were having. He would rather spend time looking for Flame than sitting in some tavern in the middle of a stinking, crowded city.

The door opened, bringing in with it a new blast of noise and odour, and a new patron. The door shut just as quickly, and the newcomer - a Greymon - stopped and looked around for a bit. Then he spotted his target, and moved towards it. Another patron, at the back of the tavern.

Jorcy watched him go, then heard Jet speak suddenly.

"Anything about that seem odd to you?"

"No, not really," Jorcy said.

"Trent," Jet called, and Trent looked over questioningly.

"That Greymon," Jet said, gesturing at the distant Digimon. "Regular?"

Trent followed his outstretched claw to the corner of the tavern, where the Greymon was having an intense and hushed conversation with someone across the table. The other Digimon was almost invisible, dressed in a black cloak, sitting in the shadows.

Trent shook his head. "Not a regular, but that's the third time he's been in today."

Jet nodded, then turned back to Jorcy.

"We're going to follow him out of here," he said in a lowered tone. Jorcy was confused, but nodded. Jet looked back at Trent.

"How much do we owe you?" he asked, gesturing at the empty beer glasses.

Trent shook his head. "Nothing."

Jet raised an eyebrow. "Why so?"

"Because I like you," he said with a smile.

Jet grunted again, but before he could say anything else, the Greymon stood and moved towards the door. The moment he reached it, Jet and Jorcy stood. They managed to catch the door before it closed, and disappeared onto the street.

Trent cleared the used beer glasses away, then returned to his little notepad. It was entirely blank, except for a black line across the bottom.

He scrawled on the line. _Jet, Jorcy. Contact A-4, 15m_. Then he drew a circle in the middle of the page, wrote "TX/s:GC1" in the middle, and drew a vertical line through it.

The ink faded off the page, and as if by magic, a new message appeared in the middle of the page, remaining for only a few seconds before fading away.

_Message sent._


	22. Chapter 22: Prelaunch checks

"Hands up, kid!"

Edan froze. He had screwed it up. Badly.

He slowly brought his hands up and away from his sides, then turned to face the man pointing the gun at him. It was the floor's local security guard, brandishing a Glock 9mm, and with every intent to use it, should his quarry try anything smart.

Edan figured he had maybe three minutes before the red alert the guard had sent brought a SWAT team up to the floor he was on. He knew he could handle them - hell, he could level the building if he had to - but the whole point of the plan was discretion. Something that, at the very last second, he had let slip.

It was a fairly thorough plan. He visited a local PC tech support shop and nabbed a business card from the counter. Then he walked into the UN reception, said that he had had a call from some office about PC problems. The card was reputable, his smile had worked, and he found himself in the posession of an elevator key for the floor he needed.

No one stopped him as he walked down the hall, and no one saw him slip into a unmarked door. Inside was a shelf of supplies, and behind that, a nondescript black plate, mounted on the wall. He lifted it, inserted the activation key, and Kaida called in ten seconds later, bursting with excitement, saying that the mainframe would be ready for use in thirty minutes.

Feeling accomplished, he removed the card, killed the light, and stepped outside without first checking if there was anyone in the hall. He bumped into the security guard, who brushed it off as a harmless mishap - until he saw the activation card. It was just Edan's luck that the back panel had been exposed, and there were green and red buttons visible.

_Thanks a fucking lot, Bin Laden,_ he thought, as the guard pulled a gun on him and demanded that he drop the bomb. Edan tried explaining that it was a memory card, but the guard reached for his radio. Edan bolted down the hall, but didn't make it more than ten feet before the guard pulled the gun on him.

"It's not a bomb," Edan said, as levelly as he could. He fully intended to get out of this without destroying anything, as he had promised to Kaida.

"Sure, kid. And you're up here without official identification. How'd you get in? Killed some of my friends?"

Edan sighed. "The receptionist let me in. I'm tech support."

"Bullshit. We have a team of nearly three hundred technicians - we don't need outsiders."

"It's was a personal call."

The guard shrugged. "Makes no difference to me. You're standing on a secure floor of the UN building with no security clearance, a shaky alibi and a unidentified device. Give me one reason I shouldn't shoot you right now."

Edan thought about that for a second. "Because," he said levelly, "I'll catch the bullet and send it back at you before you realise you've pulled the trigger."

The guard laughed, but dropped it when he saw that Edan wasn't bluffing. He didn't look the type of kid that could bluff well.

"Sure, kid. Security'll be here in a minute, and then you can try telling that to them."

There was nothing more to say. Edan's mind was racing. He needed to get out of this, he needed to get out of it _now_, and he needed to get out of it without leaving any questionable evidence. All he had in his left hand was the activation key. An idea formed in his mind. It would be tricky, but it could work.

"Well," Edan said, relaxing his legs and shifting his position slightly. "I guess I won't need this anymore," he said, tossing the key towards the floor.

In that split second, the guard's gaze shifted to the key. And in that split second, Edan went into a spin, twisting towards the right.

He dropped down as he finished the first 180, hunching on his right leg and extending his left. He swept very close to the floor, catching the key with his outstretched foot before it could even hit the floor. As the key sailed off - heading straight for the guard - he completed another half-spin, then planted his left foot in the ground and pushed himself backwards, towards the guard.

Edan twirled around in mid air, swinging his right leg way up. The key slammed into the guard's hands, releasing his tense grip on the gun. And one moment later the heel of Edan's shoe made contact with the left side of his head, knocking him out and sending him sprawling to the right, slamming into the opposite wall, and coming to rest across a few chairs and potted plants.

Edan hit the ground with his left foot, then went into a controlled collapse, falling and spinning, bringing all his limbs to ground. He ended on all fours, one arm in front of the other, shoulder angled, feet staggered, poised ready to strike again. All those years of hand-to-hand combat training in his dragon form really had paid off.

All the guard remembered, though, was a blur of motion, and then a massive blow to his face. Edan remembered it a little differently. He jumped up, grabbed the key, the guard's gun, then tore down the passage, looking for the stairs. He eventually found them next to the elevator, burst through, and continued on up the stairs.

A few flights up he came to a locked door, which a quick 9mm round took care of. And then it was another two flights of stairs, and he was out on the roof. There were three helicopters in the air - local police, SWAT, and the local news channel.

"_Shit!"_ he screamed to himself, then ran to the edge of the roof, away from the helicopters. This was the last thing he needed. The SWAT helicopter saw him, and turned to pursue, but was too late - he had already leapt off the edge of the roof.

* * *

_"I'm standing in front of the UN building, where only moments ago, thousands of panicked employees were evacuated from the building by emergency response teams. Details are sketchy at this point, but it appears that a terrorrist managed to get inside the UN building, while carrying a device which a local security guard claims to have been a bomb._

_Moments later, a teenager exited on to the roof of the building, after which a helicopter observed as the teenager jumped off the roof of the building. Police aren't clear on whether or not this teenager had anything to do with the incident in the main building, but they say that they haven't managed to recover the body yet, claiming that it 'disappeared' into thin air right after he jumped..._"

Kaida muted the sound output and grinned. She somehow found it deeply amusing that a strange kid with a little black box could spark so much fear and tension. The door to the control room slid open, and Edan collapsed against it, still in human form, and visibly shaken.

"Wh..." he began, then shook his head as he lost his train of thought. Kaida stood up, strode towards him, and gave him a quick, firm hug.

"You did well," she said.

Edan inhaled and shook his head to clear it. "Yeah, and without blowing anything up," he said. "Just like I promised."

Kaida laughed. "You didn't need to," she said, waving a claw at the incoming newscast. Edan looked over, and all it took was a shot of the UN building being stormed by SWAT teams to know that he had had a massive effect. He watched the screen for a few seconds, but shrugged.

"I can't be held responsible for their phobic behavior. How's the server doing?"

"Running pre-start checks," Kaida said, walking back to her chair. "I want to make sure that everything's working before we actually fire it up. If we start prematurely and break something, then that's it - we're screwed."

"Huh. And Jet? Jorcy?"

"Yeah - they went into Moriseriko. Jet has this idea that if there's anything of significance happening with the local army, someone in the city will know about it."

"Won't doubt him there," he said, then stepped back to the door. "I need coffee," he stated. Kaida grinned.

"Sounds great."

"Sure does, doesn't it?" he asked, then left the room.

Kaida watched the door close behind him, and smiled at a secret thought before turning back to her work. The moment they had the server fired up, they would be able to sweep the entire span of the Northern Continent in less than twenty seconds. Then she would rally Jet, Jorcy and Edan, and they would all go rescue Flame from wherever he was being held.

Quick, simple, easy to remember - the kind of plan people like Edan would approve of. Throw in a few big explosions, and you could get Jet and Jorcy on board in no extra time at all. Kaida chuckled at the thought, as she streamed in a list of environmental functions from the server's tertiary activation point.

It was by a sheer stroke of fate, and nothing more, that the Earth link shared a terminal with the Anchor monitors, and the loud beeping noise which signaled the initiation checks of the Moriseriko anchor had been suppressed along with the CNN newscast. Had Kaida known about it, though, there was nothing she could have done anyway, but at least she may have been able to put up more of a fight.


	23. Chapter 23: Cindra

A few miles away from the crowded streets, everything was much quieter. Greymon had moved straight for a deserted cathedral towards the north - a massive, cavernous building, adorned with sharp spires, panes of colored glass, and even a massive bell in a tower, located on the opposite end of a small courtyard.

No one came here anymore. Money had long since become the new religion of the Digital World, and even the most hardcore of fanatics didn't dare venture through the crime-infested streets to get here. The city council, however, never resolved to demolish the structure. It was a national monument - a piece of history - and while it would be preserved, it would never be torn down.

Jet and Jorcy were standing at one end of an alley, and the Greymon was about to reach the other end. He hadn't spotted the tail, and Jet wasn't about to take the chance of being caught in an alley with nowhere to hide.

The target turned the corner, and Jet and Jorcy sprinted down the alley, skilfully dodging puddles of muddy water, hopping over discarded barrels and crates, and ducking under pipes that crossed between the buildings. It didn't take them much more than eight seconds to traverse the obstacle course, and then they pressed themselves flat against the wall again, with Jet peeking out.

Beyond the alley was a cobbled courtyard, bordered on all sides by the back walls of other buildings. The Greymon headed straight for the main cathedral door, but turned at the last moment and entered by a smaller side door. Jet nodded at Jorcy, and they burst around the corner, heading for the main cathedral doors at high speed.

Jorcy hopped off the ground to eliminate instability, whipped out his guns, and fired twelve well-aimed shots at the main doors, destroying the locking mechanism as well as the hinges. A second later, both Jet and Jorcy slammed into them, spreading their impact force evenly across both doors.

The doors flew straight into the cathedral, slamming into some pews and flipping into the air. Jorcy recovered in mid air, waved his left gun around to the Greymon - who was looking around, astonished - and fired three quick shots.

His right arm swept across the room, looking for intruders. But there were none. He landed on the isle between the pews, went into an instinctive roll, stopped himself after one revolution and crouched between the pews. He didn't know where Jet was, but he knew he would be doing much the same.

Four tense seconds passed, but there was no sound or movement. Jorcy leaped into the air again, accessing HEAV to a small degree. His enhanced senses probed the darkness in a full 360-degree sweep, but there really was nothing.

He spread his feet, landing on top of two pews.

"Jet, place is clean," he called, holstering his guns.

"I know," he said, standing up.

"Think it was a decoy?"

"Might have been," Jet said.

Jorcy hopped off the pews and started looking around. It was actually quite a beautiful building. It was basically a massive hall, with rows of pews aiming for a raised platform at the front, where there was a really big lectern, several draped tables, and a very intricate pane of colored glass, depicting Ophanimon in a very artistic way.

One unusual feature of the cathedral was a massive, dragon-like statue, hunched down in the middle of the cathedral. His head was down, his wings were folded over his body, and he was obviously protecting something.

"So what now?" Jorcy asked. Jet shook his head.

"There's something familiar about this place."

"Stay and look around?"

"That won't be necessary."

Both of them spun around, trying to locate the source of the female voice. Indeed, it was a female. Dressed in a smart black suit, with shoulder-length blonde hair, and cold blue eyes. Jorcy knew that face, and so did Jet.

"Cindra," he growled. "I should have known."

She laughed. "Yes, Jet. You should have."

* * *

Hundreds - maybe thousands - of human soldiers appeared out of nowhere. They were outside the doors, they had broken through the roof, they lined the edges of the room. Jorcy could hear siege equipment outside, even as special teams stormed the room, taking defensive formations and locking on to Jet and Jorcy.

"I think we're at the right place, Jet," Jorcy called, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible.

"Y' think? What gave it away?"

"That human smell."

"Ah," Jet said, not taking his eyes off Cindra for one moment.

"What exactly are you trying to do here, Cindra?" Jet asked. Cindra shrugged.

"Pretty much the same thing you're trying to do. Gain an upper hand. How about you?"

"Gain an upper hand," Jet said. "You gave me my answer."

She laughed. "Jet, Jet. Same as always. Well, you'll be glad to know that you won't be stopping me. Not this time."

"What, you mean _these_ lackeys?" he asked, motioning at the human army that had surrounded them.

Cindra shrugged. "Why not find out?"

"It would be my pleasure."

Jorcy had never seen Jet move so fast. In fact, he was sure he didn't see Jet move at all. But out of nowhere, soldiers started dying. All around him. They grabbed their necks, hearts, genitals - whatever - and fell to the ground, most moaning, some silent.

Jorcy edged himself into HEAV to see what was going on. And there Jet was, moving at an incredible speed, from soldier to soldier, crossing the room hundreds of times in the space of a few seconds. Rifles were still falling from dead hands when he came back for the twentieth round.

A few seconds later he stopped, and seemingly rematerialized where he had been standing. He was in the battle-ready stance, more than ready for another go.

It took one soldier to pull the trigger, and the entire batallion opened fire. By instinct, Jorcy went HEAV, then pushed it to the max. The world shifted and pulsed, and everything slowed down. Golden streaks became individual bullets, as everything slowed to a near-stop.

Jorcy unholstered his guns, calmly moved to the middle of the room, then hopped on top of the dragon statue, stretched out his arms, and closed his eyes. And he started returning fire.

Cindra had to admit she was impressed. The instant the soldiers had opened fire, both Jet and Jorcy had vanished - the latter in a cloud of blue light. Given the ricochets, the rifled were hitting nothing, but hundreds of men were dying all around the room. The screams of death coalesced into a stream of noise almost as constant as the gunfire.

She timed fourteen seconds, and all guns stopped. Jorcy reappeared on top of the statue. Where he had been a paler shade of dark blue a few moments ago, he had been returned to his pure white form. His guns were at the ready, and the blue haze around his arms and legs indicated that he still had plenty left.

Jet also wasn't worse for the wear. Cindra grinned, and stepped forward, climbing over the dead bodies. It was only the three of them now. Reinforcements were outside the church perimeter, but she wouldn't be needing them.

"Well done," she said, slowly clapping her hands. "I'll be sure to add 'mass-murderers' to your resumès when this is all over."

"What makes you think you'll be around for that?" Jorcy called.

Cindra smiled at him. "Let me show you."

Jorcy slammed into the ceiling, his guns missing from his hands, and all his HEAV energy drained. He held there for a moment before falling back to earth, smashing into the dragon statue and emitting a wail of pain.

His body was battered and bruised. Everything hurt - all his muscles were on fire, all his joints creaked. He hadn't felt this weak since ... he couldn't even recall anything anymore. His world rapidly dimished to Cindra's still-smiling face, and then he blacked out.

Cindra was standing back where she had started, her hands in the ready position. She looked at Jet, knowing he wouldn't put up much of a fight either. She decided to spare him - it would make things worse later on.

She pulled out a cellphone and dialled a number. "Move in," she said, and all the trucks on the perimiter fired up.

"What do you want?" Jet asked. Cindra shook her head.

"Slow learner. I want EVA - that's Carver's personal supercomputer."

"You won't get it. Not from here."

She laughed again. The stupidity of Carver's finest was really amusing.

"Silly Digimon. See that dragon over there?" she asked, motioning to the statue that Jorcy was sprawled over, dark blue and unconscious.

"That statue contains a hardline anchor into Chelone. Enough trunk width to carry the entirety of the human invasion force. Of course, I only need a small team."

"If that's the anchor," Jet said, returning his gaze to her. "You'll never get it open. Gennai wouldn't be so stupid as to give you the key."

She sighed and shook her head. "Evidently you don't know him like I do. See, the anchor doesn't need a key. It needs a massive dose of activation energy. Something way beyond any civilisation currently present on both worlds. If you're powerful enough to open the anchor, you're powerful enough to use it. That was his design philosophy."

"Which means you're stuck," Jet said with a grin.

She shook her head, motioning to a bunch of medics that were running in behind her. "The anchor has all the energy it needs. Jorcy was perched on top of that anchor, and in max HEAV, for what - five, maybe six seconds?"

The penny dropped, and Jet slumped. They had opened the door _for_ her. God...

"There we go, Jet," she said, then raised a hand towards him. "Time for bed."

A glowing ring formed around Jet's head, and then vanished. He collapsed to the floor, unconscious. The medical teams collected both him and Jorcy, and made their way out.

Cindra stepped up to the anchor, knelt down, and brushed the dragon lightly on the nose.

It vanished in a blinding flash of light, leaving a massive, spinning ring, suspended in the air. As the ring turned, it built a cloud of energy around it. Cindra waved a hand at it, and all the energy condensed in the center of the ring, exploding and deforming into an event horizon.

The ring stopped moving, the event horizon stabilised, and the glow vanished.

Without hesitation, she stepped up to it, through the event horizon, and on to Chelone.


	24. Chapter 24: Cakewalk

Kaida was fully satisfied with the way things were going. The server was running a final scan, and then she would be able to boot it. The scan would take a few minutes, though, and she just couldn't keep herself in the chair any longer.

She stood, intending on finding Edan and getting that coffee she had implied she wanted. It was then that she saw the blaring alarm on the anchor monitor. Mystified, she unmuted the terminal's audio channel.

"…_ORTHERN ANCHOR BREACHED. NORTHERN ANCHOR BREACHED._"

Her eyes went wide with horror, and she tried to leave, but the door was sealed shut.

"_INITIATING EMERGENCY PROCEDURES. SECURE AREAS LOCKED DOWN._"

"Damn you!" she shouted, hammering at the door. She would be able to tear through it, and that was rapidly becoming her only option. She took a few steps back, charging a fire attack.

* * *

Edan had gone outside for a stroll. Even though the sun never set in Chelone, there was always that wonderfully soothing ocean breeze. It was there that he noticed a series of flashes on the horizon, and closer inspection had revealed an invasionary force.

He tried running back to get Kaida, but every bulkhead door in the complex was sealed. He was trapped outside.

"No problem," he said, preparing himself for a fight. What he didn't expect was to be suddenly pinned against the wall. He looked up, saw blond hair, then blacked out completely.

Cindra tossed the Guilmon to the ground. His mechanical enhancements, had they been fully prepared, might have proven a challenge for her. As it was, this entire operation was a cakewalk.

She looked up at the massive hangar doors. Beyond, she knew, was a hangar bay. And somewhere inside that bay was a secret access point to the new Chelone complex. And in _there_ was the object of her expedition.

With a single kick, she blew the entire hangar door inwards, sending thousands of shards flying. Calmly, she stepped through the lot, walking purposefully to a rusty tool rack on the other side of the hangar. Behind her, human special forces were spreading out, flanking her and covering the area.

"Ah, there you are," she said at a concrete square in the floor, demarcated only by a thin, shallow groove in the dirty concrete floor. There were no visible controls, or any other means of opening the thing.

"Captain," she called, and one of the men – differing in uniform only by a dull yellow strap around his arm – looked up.

"This is target insertion point. Hold your men back while I break through."

"Yes ma'am!"

Cindra considered the stone block. Then she looked up, tracing an invisible path in her mind. It could work…

"You men," she said, pointing in a straight line between the concrete block and one of the hangar walls. "Move out of the way."

They complied; removing themselves from Cindra's indicated line of fire. She stepped around the block, stopped at one of the corners, and considered it for a little while.

Then she leaped into the air, doing a back flip and extending one leg downwards, landing just next to that corner with all the force she could muster. The resultant explosion was enough to pop the entire concrete block – must have been over a thousand tons – into the air like a coin. She spun around, hitting the block with a flying kick, sending it screaming across the hangar floor, and through the wall at the other end. It kept flying until it hit the ground outside with a dull thud.

Under the concrete shield was a much thinner metal shell, below which was an elevator. Cindra waved to her men to breach the elevator, and do their job by flooding the compound below. She stepped back, and they moved forward, cutting through the metal roof of the elevator with remarkable speed. Then they dropped down, one by one, and spread themselves out in the corridor below.

* * *

Kaida felt the massive jar as the concrete shield was removed. She still couldn't find Edan, and hoped he was okay. As human troops stormed the corridor she was in, she opened fire, sending several of them to an immediate scorching death, just buying time to get away.

There was an emergency exit – the chamber that Edan had used to enter Earth. If she could get there, she could at least get out. But as she turned the final corner, she stopped dead in her tracks. Cindra was already there.

"And where are you going, Kaida?" she asked. Kaida growled.

"I'm leaving."

"Oh, why is that? The party's just getting started!"

Kaida clenched her right fist, building a massive charge of energy. "I don't like parties. Not when my friends get hurt."

Cindra shrugged. "There's no accounting for taste," she said.

"Really?" Kaida asked, flinging a massive fireball at Cindra. She didn't move, and the fireball exploded directly on top of her, softening and cracking the metal walls with a ferocious wave of heat.

"Really," Cindra said as the fire cleared. She was completely unharmed. Kaida growled again, and started charging a bigger attack. Cindra, however, held out her hand, and started drawing Kaida's power away from her.

She tried holding on to it, but it was no good. Cindra was just too strong. A whitish, purplish cloud of light flowed from Kaida's entire body to a central point in Cindra's outstretched hand.

Then she pulled that hand back, and Kaida gasped as every fiber of her being was immediately drained. She collapsed, barely able to move. She managed to raise one eyeball at Cindra, who had compressed all of Kaida's power into a tiny sphere in her hand. Then she crushed the sphere, dissipating all of it.

"What a shame," Cindra said. Kaida tried making a sarcastic remark, but words failed her, and she passed out.

* * *

Flame didn't know where he was. He did know that they had stopped, and carried him into a really large, circular room, where he had been hung on the wall. At least, he thought it was the wall – gravity was tugging at his feet, and his wrists were chafing.

But then they had sedated him again, and he passed back into sleep. He was long gone when they started bringing the others in. First Jorcy, then Jet, then Edan, and finally, Kaida. Each of them was secured to another section of the wall, so that they were all facing inwards. And they were all sedated, and suppressors installed. They would remain unconscious until the suppressors were deactivated. Something that Cindra would only do when she had EVA in her possession.

Edan managed to slip into consciousness for a few moments. He didn't know what to make of it. They were in a dark, stone-walled chamber. Kaida was tied to the wall on his left, and Jorcy, Jet and Flame to his right. The wall curved inwards, so he could see them all. He tried looking down, but sleep overtook him again.


End file.
